AIR 2 - Data Persistence? - air

what is the best way to include data persistence in an AIR 2 application?
is it creating your own read/write file with flash.filesystem, or is there a new way with AIR 2?

it seems that adobe wrote a library for saving preferences in AIR years ago, but have never added it to the official library? now i'm curious why they would not have done so, since data persistance is key for desktop applications.
adobe's AIR Preferences library ("as3preferenceslib"), consisting of 3 classes, can be found on Google Code here. i've created a .SWC using these files and added them to my AIR 2 library.
a class written by Jonnie Spratley showing how to use adobe's as3preferenceslib can be found here.

Related

iOS 4 Document-Based Applications

I need to create an application capable to modify and manage files on IOS.
With IOS 5 is "easy" to create a Document-Based Application, but I need to support IOS 4 too.
Anyone knows if there is a way to create a Document-Based Applications in IOS 4?
Thanks in advance.
Short answer is no as UIDocument and UIManagedDocument only arrived with iOS 5
Long answer is yes. There are hundreds of document based apps for iOS. e.g Brushes, Sketchbook Pro which are all document based apps. My own app is document based, its not that hard to do.
What UIDocument/UIManagedDocument provides is a canned API for making a generic document. Feed it a URL and it does (most of) the rest of the housekeeping.
If you wish to do an iOS4 based app then stuff you will need to pay attention to is.
UIApplicationWillTerminateNotification/UIApplicationDidEnterBackgroundNotification
Opening a new document.
Saving a document.
Shutting a document.
Autosave (maybe)
Core Data stack , if you're using Core Data
www.raywenderlich.com has some great tutorials. Maybe even iOS4 based ones still.
IMO - Don't bother with iOS4 support. Like above post states 85% use iOS5 and anyone still on iOS4 probably isn't in your target market. Especially as this is (I assume) a new app and iOS6 will be around by the time you go to market.
Just going to ask, do you really need to support iOS 4?
The adoption of iOS is over 85% of devices.
Whats the basis for the need to continue iOS 4 support?

Adobe AIR sample applications?

I just started to learning the Adobe AIR. I think I would learn quite fast by referring the sample applications. Can you let me know any Adobe AIR open source applications?
Thanks for your help.
Over 20 example apps (from Adobe):
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/samples_actionscript.html
The following sample applications will help you get started using Adobe AIR. These are basic applications built by Adobe engineers to demonstrate the capabilities of the runtime.
There are 75 air samples here http://code.google.com/p/jsairsamples/
You can thousands of code samples, implementation in the Tour De Flex app. This app is like a documentation and also a component library which shows small code implementation of what the components displayed can do.
You can get it here.

New to Ipad, familiar with SQL, how to get started

I have been a SQL writer using MS Access some years ago and have been given an IPad upon my retirement. I want to create simple database driven apps using SQL. I have downloaded SQL Lite editor from the Apps Store but it seems to have a big chunk of something missing.
Question. Do I need to have an Apple computer as a workstation and then copy to the iPad, or can I use my Windows 7 PC as the authoring tool.
Where do I find the tools for creating the graphics to enhance database search results?
Do I need to use C or C++ to create the application, as I never got around to learning it.
Odd questions I know, but google searches seem to leave me totally in the dark on this topic, yet I geel that most app's seem to revolve around some database manipulation. Would be helpful if I could find a series fo links somehwere.
best regards
Kaela
Hi
In order to develop native applications to ios devices you need the XCode environment and knowledge in objective c, its a bit odd and there are examples.
for that you will need a mac or run the mac os on a virtual box.
You can also create a non native app such as webapp using HTML5 and js and then import it to the XCode using Phonegap.
By using this method you will be able to create apps for many devices such as android and more and all you will have to do is to import your HTML5 and js into the supporting environment.
Just to warn you about these kind of apps, app store allows only native apps and its better to make native app because it will pass every inspection they make.
Thanks
yes, to develop on Apple's engine, you have to had an Apple computer. However, you can mount a virtual machine running OS X, but it's illegal and very complicated (but doable).
The "bible" for mac developers is here : http://developer.apple.com/.
It's recommanded to write your application in Objective C.

what are the down side when developing adobe AIR application?

hi
looking into the framework, what do you think about it as development framework for
cross platform desktop apps
from first look , i can see that all your source code are not encrypted
also does not support multi threaded
what else i must consider ?
i think this website gives a good overview about the pros and contras of adobe air:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=310
there are already thread here that talk about that issue:
Advantages/disadvantages of writing a web app using Adobe Air/Java as opposed to platform specfic languages?
and if you want to protect your source code, there are some things that will help you:
high performance encryption in adobe air / flash

Fireworks or AIR?

I need to write a desktop application that can run on Mac (Windows and Linux soon) that can get data from MySQL and allow users to transfer files from their desktop to the server.
I know I can write a desktop app in AIR, how would Fireworks play into this?
Can AIR connect to MySQL?
Can one FTP files with AIR?
On a second note, can one write such applications as a ring-tone maker, a disk repair/partitioning utility in AIR? I know AIR uses web technology, but what other thigns are possible?
-Jason
Do you mean Adobe Fireworks? I would use Fireworks for the interface design. It also has some customizable assets.
Here is the product page where they have a lot more info on what it's capable of.
http://www.adobe.com/products/fireworks/features/?view=topnew
An AIR application is a desktop version of a Flash Application. So anything you can do in a Flash Application you can do in an AIR application. Flash Apps work with MySQL so you should be able to get an AIR app to work with MySQL.
AIR apps can also access the local file system. For instance you can write an AIR file loader application.
Fireworks is my design tool of preference. If you are working with digital graphics there is little need to look beyond FW to things like Photoshop and Illustrator. All of the CS5 software intro screens were designed in Fireworks. It has the best 32 bit PNG output I have seen and the colors are dead on without that issue from PS changing its output from the authoring environment.
From experience, I would not recommend spending time with AIR. Web apps are the way to go and the investment in a desktop or even mobile specific device app is going to be tough to justify because of programming maintenance costs, version releases and the speed new technology is released.
You could use Fireworks for the creation of images for the UI ( User Interface ) for most parts its okay enough, if you need advanced shadowing and color options you can look into photoshop, but fireworks is just great for the basic graphical stuff.
Im not sure if you question was maybe related to the UI since fireworks itself should have nothing to do with building the Air application.
You can use different solutions to build your air application, maybe off topic but if you have not decided how to build the AIR app I would look into Adobe Flash Builder 4,5, flex and the AIR development library's. Flex is also great to easily change the user interface (CSS) where you could create the images with fireworks :)