The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development (Friends of ed Adobe Learning Library) (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: motion editor, weather gadget, open flash, Flash Player, Document Properties, Test Movie (more...)

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Product Description

• Embrace the Flash Platform and learn how to build desktop applications using the AIR SDK alongside Flash CS4.
• Understand and use the ActionScript 3.0 AIR APIs.
• Create applications that interact with any operating system to create, read, and write local files.
• Write applications that can run both online and offline, automatically checking for Internet connectivity.
• Build AIR applications that communicate with a local SQLite database.

We all know what a great tool Flash is for creating dynamic, engaging web content, and Adobe's latest CS4 release just makes it even better. Among the great new features is the ability to take all the power of Flash for the Web and put in on the desktop using AIR. AIR capability is built right into the Flash CS4 IDE, which means you can start writing desktop applications right away.

This book not only covers the essentials of using Flash with AIR (and AIR with Flash), but also shows you how to extend application functionality in new ways. once you've got Flash on the desktop, you're no longer constrained by the limitations of running inside a web browser. You'll have access to the local desktop file system, and AIR adds SQLite functionality for native database support. And just as Flash animations have a consistent look and feel across browsers, AIR allows you to create applications that work consistently across operating systems—Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

For any Flash developer who wants to go from the Web to the desktop (and who doesn't?), this book is required reading. It not only tells you how to do it, but is full of practical, easy-to-follow examples that will have you building desktop AIR applications with Flash in no time. Expanding your existing Flash skills with the Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development will make you an even more potent and indispensable force on any development team!

Summary of Contents

1. Introducing Adobe AIR
2. Introducing Flash CS4
3. Building Your First AIR Application
4. Setting AIR Application Properties
5. Working with the Window APIs and the Screen Class
6. Creating Menus for Flash Applications
7. Accessing the File System
8. Working with the operating System
9. Adding Rich Media: PDF, Video, and Audio Files
10. Working with HTML Content
11. Monitoring network Connectivity
12. SQLite Programming in Flash CS4
13. Packaging, Distributing, and Installing AIR Applications

About the Author

Marco is one of the most dynamic developers and consultants in the Adobe world. He has been passionate about informatics since he was little more than a child and used to program games in Basic for Commodore 64 before dedicating himself, while still very young, to innovative projects for the web using Flash and Director (as far back as versions 3 and 5.) In 2001, he began to collaborate with Macromedia Italia. Since that year he has produced and headed a long series of presentations, conferences and articles, which you can find listed in detail in his blog entitled "hands on Adobe world" (casario.blogs.com,) which is currently receiving several thousands of unique visitors every day. In 2005, Marco founded Comtaste (www.comtaste.com,) a company dedicated to exploring new frontiers in Rich Internet Applications and the convergence between the web and the world of mobile devices&emdash;MobyMobile (www.mobymobile.com) and YouThru (www.youthru.com) are representative of their recent work. Another example of Marco's achievements is that he is founder of the biggest worldwide Flash Lite User Group (groups.yahoo.com/group/FlashLite/) and of www.augitaly.com, a reference point for the Italian community of Adobe users, in which he carries out the role of Channel Manager for the section dedicated to Flex (www.augitaly.com/flexgala.) Marco is currently busy working on the development (in Flex) of a very ambitious project concerning bank counters at European level, and in various consulting and Flex and Flash Media Server training activities for the realisation of Rich Internet Applications on behalf of buyers of the calibre of Capgemini, Engineering, IBM partners, and Adobe Systems Software Ireland Ltd

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: friends of ED; 1 edition (December 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430215887
• ISBN-13: 978-1430215882
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #377,747 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flash CS4, ActionScript 3 and AIR SDK, April 4, 2009

By	Diane Cipollo (Editor at BellaOnline.com) - See all my reviews

Until now, if you wanted to create a desktop application, you needed to use a programming language such as C# and Visual Studio. Another option was to use a web language such as PHP and have your pseudo desktop application run through a web browser on your desktop. But with the newest release of Adobe Flash CS4 and AIR, we now have a much easier way to build desktop applications that perform the same across Linus, Mac OS and Windows. This book by Marco Casorio is a good way to learn the basics of working with Flash CS4, ActionScript 3 and AIR together. As you progress through the book, you learn how to build AIR projects, piece by piece, from layout design and creating each part of the application to debugging and publishing. You will need a good foundation of ActionScript 3 and have Flash CS4 and AIR 1.5 installed on your computer. You can download sample files for the book at the author's companion site flashcs4air.comtaste.com.

Casorio begins by discussing the new features in Flash CS4 and the AIR SDK. Next, you take a look at a few simple applications, a media player and a weather widget. You also discuss the startup process for building your application including the XML descriptor file, digital certificate and publishing parameters. Moving on, you begin to work with OOP classes that control the main features of your application window and its contents. The supporting examples are a photo gallery and a text editor that uses Flash components.

All applications have menus with commands to perform tasks such as controlling files on your local system. Casorio covers the many types of menus that you might want to add to your application and how to use ActionScript classes to create and program these menus. You also learn how to use the XMLMenu class to generate your custom menu from XML.

Moving on, you learn how to program your application to communicate with your local file system and control files, folders, dialog boxes, the clipboard and the drag and drop function. From here, you advance to the operating system and learn tasks such as launching an application on login or from a webpage, associating file types with your application and programming system alerts for both Windows and Mac. You will also learn about the AIR Webkit engine, the Acrobat Reader plug-in and how to control multimedia files.

Although most people will be reading this book to learn about making desktop applications, the author covers how to work with the AIR HTML engine to load, cache, display and manipulate HTML and JavaScript. You will use a template application as a starting point for creating applications with functions such as monitoring connectivity for working both on and off the web. Next, you will cover how to manipulate a database from your application. Finally, you will learn your options for publishing, distributing and installing your application.

Marco Casorio is an Adobe developer and consultant. He has authored several books on Adobe AIR and Flex.