New to mobile development? Wondering how mobile applications are built? Are you a Flash/ActionScript developer looking to get your hands on android air applications. This presentation will walk you the entire development process of the AIR for mobile application. We say Android air applications but really this lesson given to you by Mobile hero Chris Griffith will teach you all the basics you need to know to get rolling with developing any mobile application on air(android , ios and more). This presentation will walk you the entire development process of the AIR for mobile application from design to deployment. Chris will show you how he designs and builds applications using a variety of tools and techniques.

What is Android Air applications?

Android Air applications are applications developed in ActionScript and complied to the AIR runtime. this runtime is loaded into the mobile device and enables outputting into many mobile/desktop platforms. To really grasp the idea of Air applications we need to take a quick travel back in time(this will be a very augmented history).

Runtimes a quick distorted history

Back in the early days of web interaction became something more and more critical with the browser wars of the early 90's a door opened to a new type of development environment one that would enable creating interactive user experience that wasn't dependent on the users Browser but on a plugin. Java was one of the first cross platform runtimes it enabled developers to develop in one language and then to deploy there files in multiple platforms. As this is a very heavily focused Flash site lets move a bit in the timeline. Java was great and still is worked great in lowering development costs users for the most part weren't aware of the fact that Java was behind many desktop games and early mobile games. Java penetration over the web wasn't as big of a success it had many issues mainly when it came to performance and stability. Flash at some point peaked it head up with a tool that was razor sharp targeted to outperform on the browser. Flash became very quickly the default option for many users as browsers where not really upgrading much for many years flash pushed and changed the way we see the web today. Past few years Flash has been under the attack from the mainstream Geek Elites as browsers are maturing with the new HTML5 capabilities and as its critical role is starting to diminish from the needs of the modern browser as browsers and JavaScript mature.

Mobile Runtimes

For the most part of the mobile history Java was more or less the only option for mobile development. Flash always had an urge to be on mobile and for years it tried to push "Flash Lite" as the flash player for mobile devices. it had great promises but not great outcome and wasn't embraced as deeply as for applications to work the devices would need to support the flash player. As the mobile platforms evolved(IOS Android) so did the need to know more languages (same issues of the early web - who said history doesn't repeat itself). There are many solutions out there one of them is the Air runtime that enables building applications on one language and deploying them into many devices.

Air

The Adobe AIR runtime enables developers to deploy standalone applications built with HTML, JavaScript, ActionScript, Flex, Adobe Flash Professional, and Adobe Flash Builder across platforms and devices: including Android, BlackBerry, iOS devices, personal computers, and televisions. The runtime can be part of the device or can be bundled into the deploy files making it very simple and an invisible process for the users. The catch is its a runtime thus the mobile device would need to first decode this data and translate it to the lower level language of the OS on the run. There are some other options out there that enable developer to deploy directly to native IOS code/Android code such as HaXe.