Adobe AIR Launchpad – a tool for Flex developers building AIR applications
During the past two years, I’ve met a lot of developers going through the process of learning to build desktop applications on Adobe AIR. As they learn AIR, these developers face the same set of challenges — enabling auto-update, setting up icons, creating an install badge, accessing the SQLite database, and using the many other AIR APIs. Even my own blog traffic is evidence of the many developers seeking information on building AIR apps. For example, my blog post titled, “Adding auto-update features to your AIR application in 3 easy steps” has been read 19,828 times! As I was thinking about all of this, I realized that we needed to figure out a way to help developers learn this stuff faster!
Today we launched Adobe AIR Launchpad, a desktop tool that helps Adobe Flex developers get started building desktop applications deployed on Adobe AIR. Simply run Adobe AIR Launchpad and select the capabilities you need; Adobe AIR Launchpad will create a ready-to-import Flex project with your selected features implemented in a way that can be easily modified and extended. You can use the resulting project as a starting point for your AIR application.
Adobe AIR Launchpad creates a folder structure that contains a ready-to-compile AIR application with the selected features implemented. It also creates a ZIP file in the parent folder that can be imported directly into Adobe Flash Builder. If you select auto update as an option, a “server” subfolder will be created that contains the XML file needed on the server to control auto-update. If you select the install badge option, a “install_badge” subfolder will be created containing the files needed to create an install badge.
The generated code is well commented and clearly written. I think you will find that using this tool will dramatically accelerate learning AIR.
The Adobe AIR Launchpad is free and available now at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/airlaunchpad
If you like Launchpad and have never looked at Tour de Flex, check it out at http://flex.org/tour – there are over 500 Flex samples including a lot of AIR-specific samples.
CREDITS: Holly Schinsky (blog / twitter) built nearly all of the application including the generated code and comments. Holly has a unique sense of what developers need when learning a new language or API. Her blog has a large and growing following because her blog posts are very useful and written from one developer to another in a no-nonsense style. Holly has often discussed building code templates that developers can use as a learning resource so this project was a perfect fit for her. Christophe Coenraets, James Ward, Michael Chaize, Ben Forta and I contributed to the overall design and concept.
James Ward created a great demo video:
Michael Chaize also created a demo video:
Adobe AIR Launchpad beta for RIAgora.com from michael chaize on Vimeo.
About the Author (Author Profile)
Greg is an Adobe Creative Cloud Evangelist based in Tampa, FloridaComments (18)
Links to this Post
- Jump Start your Adobe AIR Application Development with Adobe AIR Launchpad « Devgirl's Weblog | August 23, 2010
- Flex learner | Blog | Adobe AIR Launchpad – a tool for Flex developers building AIR ... | August 23, 2010
- Adding auto update features to your AIR application in 3 easy steps « Greg Wilson's Ramblings | August 27, 2010
- Adobe AIR Launchpad accelerates app development – Adobe AIR Team Blog | September 3, 2010
- Adobe AIR Launchpad accelerates app development (Adobe Flash Platform Blog) | September 16, 2010
- Jump Start your Adobe AIR Application Development with Adobe AIR Launchpad « Thulasiram RIA developer | December 21, 2010
Thanks for the great app! Couple things to fix with your badge if they aren’t already on your list.
1. You are using the files for the original install badge and not Grant’s version, image size is much smaller than 215 x 180 with the original.
2. With Grant’s badge image size should be 205 x 170 instead of 215 x 180 (this will still work, just won’t look as nice)
3. That is all for now, thanks again for the great tool!
We are planning to offer 3 choices – the default SDK badge (what’s there now), Grant’s badge and Todd William’s install badge – http://www.taterboy.com/blog/2009/12/create-adobe-air-badges-at-any-size/
Thanks!
Greg
Will this work with FB3?
Cheers
The project will import into FB3 just fine, but you will get a few compile errors because we use Spark components
. If you change those back to , it will work fine.Greg
If you are interested in Adobe Air News – http://twitter.com/Adobe_Air_Lab
Hi,
Will there be a version for HTML/JavaScript availabel?
kind regards,
Karel
Hi:
Please consider addition of HTML/javascript support.
Best:
Jim
How about support for HTML/JavaScript dudes?
Just curious: Why does HTML/Javascript always have to come in second in all these tools?
We are hoping to do a Adobe AIR Launchpad for HTML soon, but first we’re working on one for mobile. After that, we’ll knock out one for HTML/JS.
Thanks!
Greg
Thanks Greg!
See? We HTML/Javascript developers are losers in this Adobe AIR arena. No, I’m wrong, we don’t come in 2nd, we’re 3rd after ActionScript and mobile! Darn it!
An HTML/Javascript (AJAX) version is definitely needed!
I just ran across this post and installed v2.5.0 (beta 5). It’s pretty slick.