Adobe AIR from Flash a big disaster?

Question

Does anyone have any experience with building AIR apps from within Flash CS3? I inherited an AIR app that is being build from within Flash and is doing my head in to get build.

First of all, the AIR app doesn't run from with the Flash IDE. There is no document class and when I place a trace statement on the first frame it never actually traces (yes, Omit trace actions in the publish settings is un-ticked). I see an application window (with an AIR icon) but it's not actually doing anything. It is as if the code is never executed.

Second, I'm not sure what should be included in the AIR package. It currently tries to package up all my source code when I create an AIR file, including my .svn folders.

It seems to be impossible to use relative paths in either the dialog that Flash presents (under the Controls menu) or a separate descriptor file. From Flash's point of view, what is the relative path anyway, where the Fla is placed or where the swf is placed? (currently different folders in my project).

Lastly, does anyone know of any good tutorials that talk more about the inner workings of AIR? Not that marketing or "hello, world" mambo jumbo that Google constantly seems to come up with...

Thanks, Luke

Answer 1

Any particular reason you are using the Flash IDE ? I would suggest using the Flex Builder IDE (trial for 30 days) or Flex plugin for Eclipse for developing AIR applications.

http://www.adobe.com/support/documentation/en/air/

is the best free resource I have come across for learning AIR. Good luck!

Answer 2

There is a lot of scaffolding that you need to get AIR apps working properly -- things like application descriptors, certificates, application signing, etc.. Flex builder has built-in tools that can handle this. You could probably do the same with CS3 with a lot of extra hacking, but why bother?

Get a trial version of Flex builder here ( I would recommend getting the eclipse plugin and installing eclipse first). After 60 days, when the trial expires, you should have a pretty good idea about what tools are right for you.

Answer 3

I also wanted to get a leg-up when it came to learning AIR / FLEX since we are considering developing a client for out application using these technologies.

I found the following video tutorials from Adobe to be exteremely useful. They are easy to follow and will probably be very familiar in places if you've worked in any other modern frameworks (Apple's Cocoa springs to mind especially...).

Hope you find them as helpful as I did.