Just another Flash iPod/iPad thread
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- clearThoughts
So now that it is open, has anybody tried doing an iPod/iPad app with Flash??
- TheRapture0
what did I miss?
- ahli0
yeah they come out a little slow on the performance side, think Adobe got to do some tweaking
- clearThoughts0
@TheRapture they opened it up and changed the T&C's so that you can finally export from Flash to iPad/iPhone...
Just not sure if the changes were made straight away.
Can't wait to publish my first totally useless app. :-)- flash-compiled apps are now showing up in the app storekpl
- chrisRG0
I am working on few ones.
Performance is really an issue if you want to have animations, for simple Apps should be fine.
- itstimefortea0
interesting
- hotroddy0
If you had your choice would you choose flash app compiler or safari plugin? Job's said the flash app compiler was 'the most important' reason for not allowing it on iphone. Why not then include the safari plugin?
- both are the same. How could you make as3 code work if you don't put an embedded version of FP in every executable?kpl
- ornj0
Most other flash developers I have met don't really pay much attention to resource management. Often times I get blank stares when I suggest a change to their code to take advantage of a cheaper method. I'm going to have to try my hand at this.
- I'll have to put my money where my mouth is.ornj
- dude... for years I've been really alone and have DREAMED that I could work along someone like you...PonyBoy
- ... I'd tape my mouth shut and eyelids open if someone would advise me on optimization etcPonyBoy
- run around the net with a debug version of Flash Player. Most flash devs don't even bother with debugging.kpl
- kpl0
I'm going to wait until a Flash dev makes something really clever or in demand. Then I'll steal the idea and recode the app natively. Then everyone will buy my app cos it runs 2x as fast and doesn't look like shite.
Really, whats the point of compiling with Flash when it doesn't link up to the native APIs? Especially for a resource-limited device? I think Adobe expects its devs to be idiots and unable to learn new APIs.
- ukit0
So it looks like after all that fuss, the Flash route isn't even worth pursuing for a serious app?
- ifeltdave0
native app will always be the best route to go for performance.
i think compiling with flash would be better suited for prototyping functionality to a client / vendor who will build it, or as others have said for simpler, less graphics heavy apps.
this could change bc i know that adobe never actually finished development on this due to apple changing the ToS last time around.
- Boz0
@kpl.. of course it's using native APIs.. just not all of them.
iPhone Packager is pretty behind the curve at the moment.. AIR for Android is a lot more advanced and optimizied because Adobe quit working on iPhone Packager..
But they are updating it now to get up to date with AIR for Android capabilities.
- Boz0
I've built a full blown app with UI like on iphone and sliding and scrolling and all that stuff..
Here's my objective take on it:
1. It's not meant for any visually intensive tasks. On iPhone 3G it's almost unusuable even if you use hardware acceleration for sprites and so on.
2. Video playing inside your app is again unusable because a) it has to be onVP6 or Sorenson encoded if you want to play it in your iPhone app and b) if you load h.264 encoded videos you have to play them with iPhone's native player which is far from effective. It will end your app, go into player and once it's finished playing you will have to load the app again manually.
3. Many iOS APIs are missing.. so if you thought you want to use camera to record or similar you are out of luck. Also, there was no HTML Loader class.. the new build for AIR for Android now has StageWebView class that allows you to load in html content (ie. for oAuth authorization for Facebook, Twitter etc) but not in IOS version (actually there is but it's a bit buggy right now).
4. You can save, load and all that stuff from iPHone but there is no Contact List API access for example. These are all things that are advancing rapidly on Android version but not available on iPhone. There is also no way to utilize push notifications.
5. You can do games and stuff and it will work fine but again, the problem is because 3G is just a shit of a phone now it's useless. If Apple has problems running iOS 4.x on it than you can imagine how difficult it is to optimize shit on it (even if you do stuff in Obj-C).
6. There is no support for iPhone 4 (retina display). It will run them at 320x480. You can do iPad stuff but you have to pick their template option.
AIR for iOS is waaaay behind now.. It's far from optimal or efficient. It will take a few releases to make it run well.
I will say though, my app ran nicely on 3G, but I had to shit bricks to make it happen due to limitations and so on, and yes, if you are building a more advanced applicaiton it's much better to build it natively.
There's only one thing, as AIR for iOS parts get more optimized the huge advantage is that you will be able to push the same app on all devices witihout a lot of hassle.
Having AIR/Flash on these devices is very positive because it will teach people to write more efficient code. I know that when I build stuff now i always write it a lot more efficiently because I always keep in mind that I'm publishing to mobile/very low performance devices first and then I'm doing the shabang thing for the desktop version. So you will eventually segment your code into visual presentation and data layer that will allow you to just adjust the visual aspects for performance and platform but the rest of the code will be the same.
Also, an advantage is that you will be using same code for using native APIs on both Android and iOS. So if you say navigateToURL(new URLRequest("video.mp4")) it will open a native player and allow you to communicate with it.
Adobe is building the hooks where you will be able to communicate directly to all native APIs, so this will solve push notifications and other issues that are a challenge now.
At the end of the day, it's still better to build apps in native languages, but one thing that trumps all of that is the ability to make once and create in Flash and port your existing code you developed over the course of years into mobile Flash apps. This is huge.
- kingsteven0
I ported this...
getting about 15 fps on my 3gs - half what you can expect from the air compiled version on a nexus one.I tried some timeline stuff out of curiosity. The same keyframed animation as FP2 and playing on iPhone Safari (via Gordon) was pretty smooth. As an app it was ridiculously slow - around 5fps and choppy as hell.
I had planned on doing some projects with it but because everything has to be optimized for the platform I'm not going to end up doing anything that isn't beginner level core animation anyway...
- wow performance is so great on Nexus One.. 15fps on 3gs is still great.. I'm betting that thing runs like crap on 3g eh?Boz