How to Use Google Cloud Messaging in Adobe AIR Applications

Using \Google Cloud Messaging in Adobe AIR applications

However nice the multi-platform nature of AIR is, still it is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we can write a Flex or ActionScript application that would work correctly on all possible platforms supported by AIR. On the other hand, developers feel much restricted by that AIR sometimes fails to provide all tools to fully use the functionality unique to a particular platform or device. Fortunately, we can write native extensions for a particular platform to implement features specific to this environment only. Such extensions are called Native Extensions and are attached to the AIR project as external libraries.

In our work, we often use such extensions. Here we are going to discuss the as3c2dm extension developed by Piotr Walczyszyn. It allows you to receive push-messages and display them in the notification bar. In our work, we are actively using the extension. As we have detected a number of errors and inconveniences in it, we have tried to correct them. Continue reading

Multiscreen Support in Mobile AIR Applications

As AIR applications can run on multiple platforms and devices, AIR based developers have to take into account a vast diversity of screens, their resolutions and DPIs. Despite a broad diversity of supported platforms, in this post we will focus on multiscreen development for mobile AIR applications based on the Flex framework. Continue reading

Flash Player 11.4 and AIR 3.4 Now Released!

Recently, Adobe announced its new releases of the Flash Player and AIR products, offering a number of new fascinating features:

  • More video cards supported by Stage3D
  • Concurrency (ActionScript Workers)
  • Support of iOS Push Notifications in AIR
  • Direct publishing of AIR apps to iOS
  • Support for iOS 5.1 SDK
  • Carbon APIs no longer supported by AIR
  • Compressed textures with an ATF alpha channel
  • Ambient AudioPlaybackMode
  • StageVideo.attachCamera
  • Camera.copyToByteArray/Camera.copyToVector
  • LZMA support for ByteArray

Below you can find out some details of the new features. Continue reading