On AIR with Flex

As a follow on for the Speech Recognition ANE I put up for download a while back, here is the a post to give out the source files.

The source can be downloaded here.

If you are looking for the compiled ANE instead, click here

The contents of the zip archive are,

• Android Native Project
• Actionscript Library Project
• Files required for compilation

(continue reading…)

Here is a Speech Native Extension that takes advantage of the Android’s speech recognition APIs.

Here is what the ANE does,

• Provide an API to check if the feature is supported.
• Provide an API to launch the default speech recognition UI and capture voice input.
• Trigger events based on the success or failure of the above call.

• In case of success, the appropriate event has information of the best match !
• In case of failure, the appropriate event is fired.

(continue reading…)

I did a webinar last Wednesday on using Native Extensions with Flash Builder. The agenda covered an introduction to Native Extensions – Rather Actionscript Native Extensions, the workflow involved in using native extensions, followed by a live demo.

For those of you who haven’t had the chance to attend,

Here is the link to the Recording,
View Recording

Here are the Slides,
(continue reading…)

This post is a follow up to my session at Adobe Flash Platform Summit 2011, Bangalore on the 28th of July. I spoke on Peer to Peer for Mobile Devices with the Flash Platform. Peer to Peer has been around for a long time now, but its not often you see apps making use of this immensely capable technology. My talk covered the possibilities that could come to life with P2P on Mobile, along with some demo’s. Here is the Slide Deck,

As part of my demo at AFPS, I wrote the RealTime Locator, a simple app that shares its location with every peer in a group over the RTMFP protocol. (continue reading…)

The much awaited Flash / Flex / Actionscript developer summit, the Adobe Flash Platform Summit is back again on 27th – 29th July at Bangalore, India with all new and exciting content around Devices, Experiences & Innovation. Watch out for exciting sessions around Flex for Mobile and Enterprise. Also with us this time are a host of Product Managers apart from Duane Nickull and Renaun Erickson, Evangelists from across the world. Ben Forta, too, is going to be there.

I will be speaking on the 28th July. Here is an abstract of my session,
(continue reading…)

The Blackberry Playbook App Clinic’s are here ! Your one stop destination to get those apps onto the Blackberry Playbook. The App Clinic’s, organized by various Flex user groups, are happening across major Indian cities over this week and the next.

What is it ?
If you have been longing to get your app onto the Blackberry Playbook, have a cool app idea, if you are a enthusiastic Flex / Actionscript developer, or never had an opportunity to try out the new Flex 4.5 SDK or the new Flash Builder 4.5.1, Blackberry Playbook App Clinic’s are for you !
The clinic kick-starts with a presentation on building Flex/Air Apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook. Experts from Adobe India and RIM will be present for the rest of the event at the venue to drive out your doubts and help you build apps seamlessly.

(continue reading…)

Here’s a component which behaves as a ‘Toast’ for AIR applications running on Android. The component can essentially be used across any Flex application, since it is an ActionScript class.

For those of you who don’t know, Toast is the small transparent alert that pop’s up (and doesn’t block your UI) when u set an alarm on Android phones !

Toast on AIR for Android

In the pic above, the text ‘Enter Required Fields’ appears in a ‘Toast’

(continue reading…)

Here are a couple of mime-types for a server housing flex apps,
Most of these maybe already defined by your hosting provider !

AIR
Mime-Type : application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip
Extension : .air

FXP
Mime-Type : application/x-zip
Extension : .fxp
(continue reading…)

Here is a Flex Tutorial I’m writing for a couple of my friends. While the Videos on ‘Learn Flex in a week’ and “Test drive Flex in 1 hour” serve as good tutorials, here is an application I have attempted to build, which serves as an example for a developer trying out flex for the first time.

Get yourself a Flash Builder to start off. A 60-day trial is available here

The application demonstrates essential implementations like connecting to a WebService, SQLite Database and UI practices, a developer needs to be aware of prior to building a Flex application. This is brought about with 4 components, demonstrating the implementations below,

1) Displaying Hello World.
2) Displaying Hello World with a better UI (PopUp) from a XML file.
3) Displaying Hello World from a Webservice (REST).
4) Displaying Hello World from a Webservice that pushes data into a SQLite Database.

(continue reading…)

Here is a set of steps you need to follow to configure a new SDK on Flash Builder 4.

Download the AIR SDK
1) The latest SDK can be downloaded from here : http://www.adobe.com/products/air/sdk/
2) Navigate to /Flash_Builder_Installed_Folder/sdks
3) Find the folder named ’4.0.0′ (Our Flex 4 SDK) and make a copy of it in the same location, and name it, ’4.0.0 AIR’
4) Extract the contents of the downloaded archive, and paste it inside the ’4.0.0 AIR’ directory.

Configuring the new AIR SDK
1) Right Click on the Project Name in Flash Builder, and select Properties
2) Select ‘Flex Compiler’
3) Select ‘Configure Flex SDKs’
4) In the popup window that opens, Select ‘ADD’ and point to the new SDK you just created, namely ’4.0.0 AIR’.
5) Click ‘Ok’
6) Select ‘Use Specific SDK’, and point to your new SDK.
7) Click ‘Ok’

The application should now get complied with the new SDK.