Air for Android and AIR 2.0 supports the location sensor, so it’s now possible using the Geolocation class to obtain the current geographical location of a mobile device (latitudine and longitude).
When I have tested this new feature on my device (Google Nexus One), the first thought in my mind has been how to display this location using Google Map and update the map every time my position changes (for example using my car).

So I have created a new Air for Android file in Flash CS5 (but it should works in …

…..finally yes!!
I have published on my YouTube Channel a new video where i show how the same ActionScript 3.0 code (a photogallery IPhone style) can works on multiple devices: Apple, Android, desktop and web.

I have done a simple comparative launching the same AIR application on an Android phone (Google Nexus One) and the last an IPod Touch (iOS4) without any mobile optimization.
So I have simply compiled and published a Box2d sample on both devices at the same resolution.
Android phone seems to work really fast and can move tens of boxes, while the IPod slows after 8-9 objects.

This month I spent a lot of time to test the new interesting features of Air for Android but I didn’t really pay attention about performance.
So, last weeks, when one of my friends finally got the Apple certificate and he told me that IPhone/Air performance really sucks I decided to spent a day to understand how really Adobe Air for Android is fast.

In my last Air for Android article I have explained how to load a local XML file in a Flash CS5 Android application.
Anyway, if you need to load a REMOTE xml file, you can use the same AS3 code, making a little change to your xml-descriptor file, otherwise you won’t be able to load a remote file.

When you’re working with Air for Android, you could often need to load application settings (or something else) from a local XML file.

Another new feature in AIR for Android is the way to manage the orientation event.
To accomplish this task you can now use the orientationChange event that is dispatched every time the user changes its phone orientation.
However, in the current beta release I got some problems to use this event because I wasn’t able to get the right stage size.
So I have decided to use the standard Event.RESIZE event and the new deviceOrientation property.
In other words, when the user changes the phone orientation, the Event.RESIZE will be dispatched and inside the …

Wow!!! Finally Adobe Flash on my phone… again.
I was waiting for it from the first Flashlite version on Nokia S60.
Infact, after the previous FlashLite experience, Adobe is working on the Adobe AIR version for mobile devices available on all Android phones with OS > 2.2 (the last version in this moment, codename Froyo)
Now it’s still in a beta, so it’s not officially available on your Flash CS5, but it will be available soon.

When you write AIR desktop applications you can create menu bars very similar to the OS native menu.
In this sample we set a custom Window menu (on Microsoft os) or an application menu (using MAC os) in according with the installed OS.

Flex 4 provides new containers that you should use instead of the previous HBox and VBox available in Flex 2 and 3 and the Spark Group is one of the most used to display visual childs.
This container allow you to set the layout property, used to define the rules to display these visual elements and their properties (i.e. gap, alignments, padding and so on).