As most of us know, Adobe is working feverishly on AIR to make it easier for developers to create multiscreen applications that run on various devices and platforms. Unfortunately, the term multiscreen is confusing people.
The common misconception is that multiscreen development means "write once, run everywhere", aka the original AIR marketing slogan. That slogan was appropriate when AIR was just desktop apps, but things have dramatically changed in the past year. Multiscreen development now means developing for multiple screens, not all-in-one. Read more
I wanted to build a music player for Android, but before I could start I realized that I had no idea where the music files were stored on the device, let alone how to actually grab them.
So I took a step back and made something simpler: an Android documents browser.
* in no particular order and as brief as possible...
AIR is Everywhere
Not really, but it's circulating. AIR is definitely on Android, just check out any of the 50+ Android hands-on labs and sessions. And it's now on BlackBerry, especially the PlayBook (w/ AIR-based OS). It's also on Samsung's Galaxy Tab. And one of their... uh... Blu-Ray players. And a Samsung TV early next year.
The takeaway - by MAX 2011, AIR will be much closer to "everywhere" which will be awesome.
The challenge - will AIR be on PS3 and XBox?
Flash Builder / Burrito / Hero
These are the true-blue heros behind AIR's growing significance. Burrito is buggy but has a to-die-for feature: USB to Android deployment for testing. Couple of steps and my app is ON MY FREAKING PHONE! Pow! And the new Hero SDK makes my app feel more or less natural on my phone.
The takeaway - I'm making Android apps, stat.
The challenge - how to get Hero-based AIR apps on my real devices: my iPhone and iPad.
My friend Mike posted instructions for installing the AIR 2.0 beta a couple of months ago which was really helpful for non-programmers like me. Unfortunately only a week later the AIR team changed the file type of the download which essentially nixed Mike's instructions.
The good news is that the new file version is actually pretty easy to install, but the instructions are geared towards people who think like a programmer instead of us Creative Suite people.
The new instructions are available in the Release Notes, which non-programmers might find a little confusing. Here's detailed instructions (for the rest of us) on how to install AIR 2.0: Read more
Very happy to announce the latest update to Cloudskipper. Naturally we have a lot more we wanted to do, but we had to cut it off somewhere. In particular there's a couple of major UI updates that we want to get out and test. Here's a list of changes:
New large header display w/ album artwork, artist, title, next track, and source app
Clock display with day & date
New footer-based controls
Reorder-able application tabs
M4A and MP4 audio file playback
iTunes & internet radio supported (not fully baked, eats memory over long period of time)
New horizontal menus for video home and user pages
Most improvements are in Vimeo app
Larger type/fonts for HDTV display
Under the hood adjustments for video playback and screen management
Moving right along - we're happy to present the 0.2 release of Cloudskipper. The two important new features are Vimeo and Netflix, as well as shuffle and loop playback modes.
We've added basic user features for Vimeo, allowing people to access all of their public content including clips, appearing in, likes, channels, groups, and contacts' clips and likes. We've also added a couple dozen of the most popular channels and groups to the default menu. Since I have a long history with VJs, I've highlighted several VJ lists as well including a few custom lists I've created on Vimeo specifically for Cloudskipper viewing. Vimeo is especially interesting using the new shuffle and loop settings.
For Netflix, we've only done the basic / public RSS content. Since Netflix is subscription based, We have to implement OAuth before we can provide users with access to their accounts. But once we get oauth done for Netflix, we should be able to port that process over to all other existing services.
This release also includes several bug fixes and interface tweaks. For example, iTunes lists are much easier to sort by album & track number. Video and audio playback area also much more stable.
It's hard to say what else is done because we're already working on 0.3. Lot's of ideas being worked on for that release, but hopefully this release will keep you entertained enough.