This month I started to play with Flash Builder because I don't have a mac to create native iPhone apps.
I have made a Flex Mobile Project and an AS3 Mobile project. Both do mostly exact the same and I see great differences in operation speed (AS3 version is much faster). Also the size of the AS3 version is less than the size of the Flex version when I deploy the project.
But one thing disappoints me, the size of a deployed AS3 app (Android) is still about 8MB. I think that is quite huge for a simple app, or is it normal? I did not test the iOS version because I am not an Apple Developer member (is there a trick to deploy an iOS app with fake certificates)?
Resources I have used in the apps:
Two images approx. 35kb in size
A StageWebView
I want to know:
What is the average size of a simple app when it is a native app (apk file)?
What is the difference between an AS3 app and a Flex app except the libraries that re used?
Is the AS3 app converted to C or another language?
Why is the apk so huge (IMO)?
Is there a trick to deploy an iOS app with fake certificates? (just for testing)
Thanks for the answer(s).
What is the average size of a simple app when it is native app (apk file)?
I have no idea. When you were comparing sizes; did you export a release build or a debug version? The full version of my app; using Captive Runtime is 12MB. That includes all the embedded images. I thought that roughly 8MB is the size of the embedded runtime. Of course, if you don't use Captive Runtime then the app will be smaller; but it will have a depency on the user having the runtime installed.
What is the difference between an AS3 app and a Flex app except the libraries that are used?
For all intents and purposes nothing. The Flex Framework will need to execute code to setup the framework and such. In theory this 'impact' is offset by the value that the framework brings.
- Is the AS3 app converted to C or other language?
Not for Android or Playbook. It relies on the Mobile AIR Runtime--which I assume is written as a native app somehow. For iOS there is a more in depth conversion taking place; but no on knows the exact magic sauce; but it the process is much more intensive than Android or Playbook and people believe that your code and the AIR Runtime is converted to Objective C somehow in a way that is not in violation of the Apple licensing agreement.
Why is the apk so huge (IMO)?
Huge is open to interpretation. Without seeing your full app code; it's tough to judge.
Is there a trick to deploy an iOS app with fake certificates? (just for testing)
I don't think so; although there may be possibilities on unlocked devices.
You would like to use Mobile AS3 Project if you want you apps to be smaller and your GUI mainly contains vector graphics and Mobile Flex Project if you prefer to use standart GUI Controls that comes together with Flex framework but adds overhead in size because of controls that come with it.
As of the other questions:
the size of the apps is different on mobile platforms. Typical iOS app is about 2MB - 20MB. It really depends on resources you store with your app. What might be important to you is not to overcome 20MB if not needed because 20MB+ apps require Wi-Fi connection to be downloaded.
(However you should export release build version only as mentioned by www.Flextras.com)
there is no fundamental difference between AS3 and Flex apps - they both compile to the same instructions that executes on targeted mobile platform.
as far as I know (being iOS developer myself) there is no workaround to deploy an iOS apps. You need to use Mac and become Apple Developer to deploy with valid certificate.
to make your app smaller try to pai special attention to the resources you add to the project. Although I believe the size is so big because of framework itself, you would like to use more vector graphics vs. bitmaps when compiling apps with Flash/Flex.
When you export for Android you have an option of embedding the air framework in the application, that way your users don't have to download air. you can export your application without air embed which will result in a much lighter application, however your users will need to download air runtime. http://cookbooks.adobe.com/post_How_do_I_create_an_AIR_application_for_Android_tha-19299.html
Related
Have you already developed a Xamarin app whose views are generated from a Json recovered when launching the application?
I met a client with this kind of need:
they are developing a web app to prototype the screens by adding and positioning some controls (TextBox, Label, ...)
this generates a Json that must be interpreted by the Xamarin app: this will build the different views dynamically
in a first version, the user's data would be stored locally (through a file or SQLite) and synchronized "manually" when the device is connected to a computer
the app will work on Android only in a first time, and then on WPF
The client has not yet decided between Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin native, but it's probably more interesting to do it through Xamarin.Forms, even if iOS is not required: this should make porting on WPF easier.
Have worked on similar cases? Have you some recommendations? Are there plugins or patterns that could be used to simplify this development?
I've found this one, but it doesn't seem to be the same use.
There is also this article on iOS, but there is not the same thing on Android.
This would in theory be possible using a massive code behind builder for a page but should NOT be done for a production app. Mobile apps have very specific requirements that need to be thought of before attempting.
Xamarin is great for simplifying code reuse, and if you use Xamarin Forms you can reuse the UI components for Enterprise apps.(the less fancy and pixel perfect the layouts need to be the better. )
Your client would be better served by making it a mobile compatible web page instead from the details you have shared.
Is there any way which can be adopted, to create cross platform responsive mobile apps using Flash Builder ?
We are using our custom written Resigning Engine for this purpose right now, but we tend to replace it with any generic Resigning tool or to cater responsiveness for all kind of devices/platforms.
Being on the same cross platform development, i.e. Flex, Action Script and MXML, is there any solution for this?
Thanks
It's possible deploy Flex-apps on Mobile devices, see Mobile app development
at Adobe Devnet more details
You definitely can develop Android and iOS apps using Adobe Air, Flex, AS3, MXML and publish them on Apple App Store and Google Play Store. But it's limited to these platforms, and Adobe is very unlikely to add any new platform to this list.
Pros:
it's really cross-platform. Once your application works on one, it's really easy to get it working on the other; so the development cost compared to native applications is much lower;
you may have some OS specific features/design; using by example OS specific CSS directives;
You perfectly may create an app with a responsive design, all tools are provided, but like for HTML/CSS, it requires a lot of work;
you may access all phone features (sensors, camera, etc...) using Adobe Native Extensions
Cons:
the size of the generated application: as it includes the AIR runtime, even a very simple app will weight around 12 Mb (9 for the runtime + 2.5 for Flex);
the performances are correct but not as good as those of native apps; one of the reasons is that Flex does not allow to use GPU for rendering (but Flex is not a framework for creating games);
it would be costly to get an app looking like a native one, as you would have to mimic all of native components. There was a project to do this (Eskimo), but it looks dead, and the components were not polished enough to be used in production when they stopped the development;
Adobe Native Extensions offer is rather limited, and they are quite tricky to write; (these drawbacks are not strong ones: you can write extensions, assuming you know to write native code; and most of the common features are available as ANE);
like with any other cross-platform technology, there are a few issues that you can't fix by yourself; you just can wait for Adobe to fix them when it's a problem in the compiler or the AIR runtime; hopefully they follow a 3 months release cycle since they launched AIR on mobile;
it runs on Android 2.3+ devices only; and only devices that are matching the minimal requirements defined for the AIR runtime; that is to say, most of the smartphones and tablets, except cheap ones like ZTE products. When a device is not considered as powerful enough by adobe, the AIR based apps are not displayed in the stores.
Some recommendations:
The best way to organize your code is to create a project for each OS, with specifics assets (icons by example) and a specific manifest file (app.xml), and put all of your application code in a library used by these two projects. It will allow you to test your code (Flex mobile project can't be unit tested), and will avoid you permanent modifications of the manifest.
Worflow: it's usually faster to develop for Android, and then adapt you app for iOS, because it's faster to deploy and test on Android device (although you may use the Adobe Simulator most of the time).
Use the latest release of Apache Flex; it handles the high resolution devices. Forget Adobe's release (4.7 and lower)
Test quickly and often on mobile, especially for the responsive aspects.
Use FXG instead of bitmap graphics each time it's possible (i.e. if they arent animated); it's lighter and very easy to scale.
Mad Components
Alternatively, you may consider using Mad Components instead of Flex.
Flex was not designed for mobile at first; MC was. So it's faster (looks like native), and much lighter (although you still need the embedded AIR runtime which weights 9 Mb).
So I am writing a cross-platform (so far plans for Windows and Ubuntu) application for both the web and desktop.
This application
is expected to at times be moderately graphically intensive and perform a substantial amount of file IO. I am writing it in Dart. Which may seem like a
"funny" choice given the circumstances, however I did not want
to deal with any heavy API's or have two code bases (NaCl and GCC with two different libs).
In short I am using Dart to interact with an HTML web page, and noticed the Dart VM does
not interact with a webpage unless you are in Dartium. But I want a "desktop application" as well as a web application which eliminates Dartium as a choice, so alternately I plan to use a Qt Webview to make it look like a desktop app, but what I am wondering is would it be worth it to go through the trouble of embedding the Dart VM into my app? In doing so would it easily enough to get the Dart VM (running a dart script) to interact with the page in the Qt Webview (I am a bit new to Dart)? Thanks for reading!
Dartium will eventually be merged with Chromium, allowing your DART applications to run inside chrome directly as a web technology.
Once that merges, you can take advantage of the new Chrome Apps which allow you to have a desktop version of your web technologies. As such, you won't need to use Qt Webview, or embed dartVM into your native application; just use Chrome Apps.
~Main
I am a newbie to the libGDX game development framework.
Can anybody explain the purpose of the "desktop" application? Is it necessary to create a "desktop" application for my android application? Is it because the class which launches my main application is in my desktop application?
Sorry for asking such lame questions. Kindly help me out and clear my basic understanding regarding such things.
Thanks in advance!
The purpose of the library the way it's designed is to allow you to create all of your game logic in a way that doesn't depend on the platform. That way your game can run on Windows/Linux/MacOS/Android.
As a result you can run your game while you're testing right on your desktop, saving you from having to package an APK and deploy it to an Android emulator or device. Your development goes much quicker that way (plus you get free support for platforms other than Android).
When developing with LibGdx you have one main project, which holds all you platform independent code (like 99% of code) and you have projects for other platforms, which are typically just one class. So, beside that main project you must have at least one more, platform dependent. And if you are using assets you must have android since assets (graphics, sounds, fonts) must be placed there. Having desktop project is nice to have, as Odat said, for testing - you can run your desktop app much faster and i.e. make screenshots, maybe record it as video....
For android or iOS development use your Desktop project for rapid development of your game mechanics. Load time is a fraction of the Android build and launch and much quicker than the emulator. Debugging is much quicker to setup and run in the Desktop project.
You can quickly add bits to your game and get immediate feedback on how it works.
Of course many people release fully functioning games with only a Desktop version. Tools even exists to package them with installers!
I've been developing a project in AS3 but decided to switch to AIR instead, as I found out it's impossible to save files on user's hard drive without prompt appearing. My question is, what changes do I have to expect? is the code written in same AS3 syntax/style? Did instantiating objects / drawing shapes / positioning system / stage change in AIR? thanks.
Everything is the same from a code perspective, except that the AIR SDK includes quite a number of new APIs that are less restrictive and geared toward application development since the deployment target is no longer a web browser.
If you can, you should take a day or 2 and read thru the documentation so you will know what's available to you. Make sure to select the most recent versions of AIR and Flash Player under Packages and Class Filters: Runtimes so the docs are populated with what you need.