Developing Android Applications with Adobe AIR

Chapter 16. ViewManager

If the user can’t use it, it doesn’t work.

—Susan Dray

Unlike desktop applications, mobile applications only display one screen, or view, at a time. Each screen should be designed for a single task with clear and focused content. Intuitive single-click navigation to move to previous and next steps is key.

We will explore two approaches in this chapter. The first is a navigation system I wrote for my mobile applications using pure ActionScript. The second approach takes advantage of the ViewNavigator in the Flex Hero framework for mobile applications. It includes a few additional features such as transitions and a global ActionBar.

Navigation

You want your audience to be able to move forward between screens without re-creating the same steps over and over. You may need to provide the logic to navigate back to previous screens.

Google discourages the use of the physical back button for anything but going back to the previous application. However, the functionality exists, and some applications, as well as Flash Builder Mobile, use it to go through the stack of views. In my example, I create a back button within the application instead.

ViewManager

I originally developed this code for a conference scheduler application.

Attendees can carry the scheduler in their pocket and organize and save their own schedules. The application’s business logic is fairly simple, but all the screens are interconnected and can be accessed from several different points. For instance, from ...