Earlier this week I finally found the time to get my hands on Adobe's new tools to enable AIR development for mobile, specifically the Android platform. I have to be a bit vague about the details as things are still under NDA but I thought I'd share some quick thoughts, and the actual results of my first Android application.
As I said - I have to be a bit vague. As soon as I can show you the tools I used, I will. But let me just say this. The only way mobile development could be easier is if Adobe sent an engineer to my office and wrote the code for me. This is game changing. I've given Adobe a hard time in the past for their MAX keynotes where they constantly, and regularly, state that "Mobile is really big now!" and "Next year mobile will be everywhere." I'm sure many of my readers have attended MAX and have heard the same. Frankly, I laughed at it. But guess what? I'm a fracking believer now. Hard core. When Adobe releases these tools to the public I honestly think we're going to see a whole heck of a lot more mobile development from people in our community. I am not ashamed to say it - I was giddy. The application you will see below is the result of 2 or so hours work. Of those 2 hours, I'd say a good 90% of it was due to me being a bit unfamiliar with Flex 4. Shoot - I had to look up how to do validators again. If you are familiar with Flex 4 already then you are going to be developing mobile applications incredibly fast.
When I can, I'll post the full code to the application, and talk about the experience of building it, but for now, anyone with an Android compatible phone should be able to download the APK below (unzip it) and give it a whirl. The application is a port of an old web site I built. I won't tell you the details, but it should be perfect for the Halloween season. For those of you with "subpar" phones, you can check out the screen shots below.
Shot 1:
Shot 2:
