Monday, 4 February 2013

Getting started with iOS iPhone apps and Flash CS6

One of the reasons there's been little activity (hardware development-wise) at Nerd Towers is we've finally joined the cool kids and had a go at making some iPhone/iPad apps. Yes, yes, not before time and all that. But it's been quite a learning curve!

Not the coding - we've been writing stuff in Flash/Actionscript for a while now. But it was time to upgrade from that old work-purchased CS3 so we went crazy and subscribed to Adobe Flash CS6 for 12 months. At just £17/month it's actually really good value - it'd take about three years to pay back the £600 purchase price at this rate, by which time, there'll probably be an update on the way! Using the monthly subscription method, you automatically get any updates as they are released. Well done, Adobe!

Anyway, back to this blog post - making our first iPhone app.
Actually, if you're using a Windows version of CS6, getting it up and running is actually a bit of a faff, but perfectly do-able. All the tutorials on the 'web tell you to use a Mac if you can (I can't bring myself to, and other people I know have battled on down the Windows route successfully so I thought I'd give it a go!)

There's no point repeating here what the Adobe website tells you to do, perfectly well, at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/as3/iphone/WS144092a96ffef7cc-371badff126abc17b1f-7ffe.html but the upshot is that after about an hour of messing about (including going to the shops for milk and coffee) we got a working .p12 certificate. And more importantly, this little screen:


We successfully created our first iPhone app (well, I did anyway!).
Now we're off to bug Steve about how to actually get it onto the device....

Posted by Chris at 21:47
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7 comments:

  1. strangebiros5 February 2013 at 07:58

    Interestin, I like the idea of not having to drop £600 for CS whatever...
    however I was sure iOS devices didn't run flash, and you needed to build apps in Objective C using X-code? IF you can port Flash apps, my younger son will be pleased, as he is happiest in that environment...

    Will pick your brains when if you are in the hackspace tonight

    Rob

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris5 February 2013 at 08:45

    Objective-is one route, but not the only one! In fact, I was going to upgrade to CS5 when it came out, only for Apple to drop their bombshell and say they wouldn't support Flash (there was even talk of putting the Flash player on its own dedicated hardware at the time, to make it super-easy for anyone to support it, without using precious cpu cycles!).
    Don't get me started on the whole HTML5 vs Flash argument - I was distraught at the thought that Flash was going to be redundant.

    Thankfully, Flash CS5.5 and Flash CS6 can both compile for iPhone, iPad and iPod as well as Android. So you can use exactly the same source to create web-based apps/games, then change a few parameters and deploy to Android or iOS, using AIR.

    I was really, really late into the smartphone market (got my first fancy phone only 12 months ago) and it's a Galaxy Ace. It's running an ARM6 chip and Adobe AIR needs an ARM7 or higher platform. So while I can't make apps for my own phone, I can make cool stuff for Apple (booo) and Android/AIR on an ARM7 platform (incidentally, for "lower" ARM6 Android devices, Basic4Android is a really easy to use bit of kit).

    Steve has been writing apps for iOS in Flash for ages. He'd be able to tell you all about it. Flash rules once more!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Chris5 February 2013 at 08:53

    *while I can't make apps for my own phone should read ~ while I can't make apps for my own phone IN FLASH.

    I do use Basic4Android to build apps on lower-end Anrdoid devices. It's not as nice as Flash, and has a few peculiar gotchas you need to be aware of, but overall it's quite a nice bit of kit and if you're familiar with Visual Basic it should all be very familiar.

    ReplyDelete
  4. strangebiros8 February 2013 at 18:58

    I got schooled by Pete Hobson at Ras Pi evening about all the different ways of getting apps built, real eye opener...

    ReplyDelete
  5. AlamNobi30 May 2013 at 19:50

    Adobe is really good for Flash and animation creation. Here price is the worth. click here

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous29 August 2013 at 06:26

    When Apple announced that Adobe Flash Player would not be supported on iOS, many people assumed erroneously that Flash content couldn't exist on the iPhone, the iPad, or other mobile devices. However, the reality is that many iOS and Android apps have been built and deployed using Flash technologies, and Adobe continues to invest in tools and frameworks to make it easier to create and deploy such apps.

    ReplyDelete
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