Beginning Flash®, Flex®, and AIR® Development for Mobile Devices

3

Building AIR Applications for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS Devices

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Setting the properties of an application descriptor file manually
• Specifying image icons for an application
• Setting permissions for Android and BlackBerry applications
• Packaging AIR applications for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS
• Updating AIR applications

In this chapter you'll take a look at some of the elements involved in constructing AIR apps, outside the task of actually coding an application.

First, you'll explore the core components of the AIR application descriptor file, understanding how to specify settings for it, covering image icon assignment, and setting Android permissions and specifying iOS settings.

You'll close the chapter by packaging a mobile application using Flash Builder, and then look at how you can update AIR applications that aren't uploaded to a target platform's marketplace.

AIR APPLICATION DESCRIPTOR FILES

An Adobe AIR application descriptor file contains parameters that are used to identify, install, and launch an AIR application.

Each new project created in Flash Builder automatically generates an AIR application descriptor file template. The AIR application descriptor file name is usually generated by the name of the application set in the Flash Builder New Project wizard, as covered in Chapter 2, in which HelloWorldApp generates HelloWorldApp-app.xml.

This section takes a look at editing an application descriptor file focusing on each of the ...