Flex Mobile Development – Adding Maps with the MapQuest AS3/Flash API!

A topic that has come up often in my conversations with developers lately is how to easily add mapping components to their their Flex and Flash mobile apps. Now I’m super excited to share this latest AS3/Flash API for mobile from MapQuest for everyone to check out! The new version contains touch-friendly maps and controls and was streamlined for performance on mobile. To get started, first check out...

Flex Mobile Development – ToggleSwitch Sample (with source)!

The Flex/Flash Builder 4.6 prerelease includes a new ToggleSwitch control that can be used to indicate a binary value (like a CheckBox). Below is a screenshot showing a sample of two being used. The first switch shows it selected by default using a specified slide duration (for animation in milliseconds), and the second one uses a custom skin class to define different labels: The important part of the...

Flex Mobile Development – Building Tablet Apps – Full Example with Source Code!

I just returned from RIA Unleashed where Christophe and I presented a Flex Mobile Boot Camp session. In this session we built an Expense Reporting application called XpenseIt, specifcally targeted for tablet devices. We originally presented a 4.5.1 version at MAX, but wanted to utilize all the awesome new components available in Flex 4.6. We’re sharing the assets from this 3 hour lab HERE for those...

Flex Mobile Development – Callout Component Sample (with source)

Flash Builder 4.6 and Flex 4.6 are currently in pre-release and this is the first of a series of posts highlighting the new features with sample code. Most of the new Flex 4.6 components were created for tablet application development where more screen real estate is available to work with. The first component I’ll highlight in this series is the new Spark Callout component. The Callout is used to...

Flex Mobile Development – Encrypting Data

Adobe AIR 3.0 Beta is now publicly available and includes a key feature that many may not yet be aware of, EncryptedLocalStore support. The EncryptedLocalStore is a class that ‘provides a persistent, encrypted data storage mechanism.’ This class was available for use in AIR Desktop applications but restricted on mobile until this latest AIR 3.0 release. It’s very simple to use. I created...

Adobe AIR Launchpad 3.0 Released supporting Android, iOS and Blackberry Devices!

Today a new version of Adobe AIR Launchpad is available with a bunch of new features added to support Flash Builder 4.5.1 to allow you to get a jump start on your mobile application development! The new features include: 1) Select up to three mobile targets including Android, iOS and Blackberry. The specific code and settings needed for these targets will be generated based on your selections. 2) New...

Exit vs Suspend your iOS Application

When developing for iOS, you should be aware of a setting that will allow you to completely exit your application rather than just suspend to the background (due to the iOS 4.0 multitasking features allowing you to move quickly between your applications). There’s a key that can be specified in your AIR app-descriptor.xml iPhone section to do this, that when set to true will inform the device that it...

Flex/AIR for iOS Development Process Explained!

So you’ve heard the great news and downloaded Flash Builder 4.5.1 supporting iOS, what now?! The process to become an iOS developer with Apple can be a bit daunting. This post is intended to help make the process easier and more understandable for those looking to develop applications for iPhone, iPad etc. My best advice before diving into this is to try not to get too caught up in the jargon and...

New Mobile Samples in Tour de Flex!

A new set of samples are available today in Tour de Flex showing various mobile features using Flex 4.5. Some of these samples were included previously under the Adobe AIR Launchpad category previously and are part of Adobe AIR Launchpad, but many new ones are available today under a new Flex Mobile category. Here’s a brief description of the NEW mobile samples, but if you haven’t looked at...

Flex 4.5 Mobile Development – Alert PopUp and other Skinnable PopUps (with source code)

When doing mobile development using Flex 4.5, one of the first things you may discover is that you cannot use the mx.controls.Alert class, and then wonder what the best practice is to achieve this. The recommended way of displaying a popup control in Flex 4.5 mobile applications is via the new Spark SkinnablePopUpContainer class. I created a sample for Adobe AIR Launchpad and Tour de Flex to show how this...