Developing Android Applications with Adobe AIR [2]
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to Arno Gourdol, Director of Engineering, Flash Runtime Foundation, and to the AIR team for their hard work and responsiveness during the prerelease of this product (in particular, Mohit Arora, Syed Mohd Mehadi, Romil Mittal, and Ashutosh Jagdish Sharma). I would like to express my appreciation to Joe Ward, who did a stellar job of providing answers and documentation on all aspects of the technology.
I would like to acknowledge all my fellow developers on the AIR for Android prerelease list, in particular, Jyunpei Furukawa and Pascal Sahuc.
Thanks to O’Reilly editor Mary Treseler, copyeditor Audrey Doyle, production editor Kristen Borg, and illustrator Robert Romano. Thank you to the O’Reilly technical reviewers: Tom Barker, Rich Tretola, Matthew David, Chris Griffith, and a special thank to Kevin Bahadoor.
In addition to the O’Reilly technical editors, I asked friends and professional acquaintances to review parts of this book. They each read a single chapter based on their expertise; several generous souls reviewed more than one.
Thank you to Francois Balmelle, David Cameron, Danny Durra, Renaun Erickson, Judah Frangipane, Ben Garney, Colin Holgate, Alexandre Houdent, Kevin Hoyt, Lisa Larson-Kelley, Elliot Mebane, Doug McCune, André Michelle, Keith Peters, Brian Rinaldi, Michael Thornburgh, and Edwin Van Rijkom.
Thank you to Grant Garrett for letting me use the Influxis services to test my video applications, to Jonathan Bryski for the walk cycle drawing, and to Pier Borra at MTVNetworks for the sabbatical to jumpstart the writing process.
Merci to Thibault Imbert for his contagious enthusiasm when I first considered writing a book. Thank you to Rich Shupe for sharing his experience as an author and his great sense of humor.
I would like to express my gratitude to Mike Chambers and Colin Moock for helping me at some point along the way in an industry where being a woman often means being invisible.
Thank you to Satyen Mehta, my partner, for his patience and great support (he addresses me as The Jacqueline Cousteau of Flash), and for cooking me many delicious meals while I was writing.
CMB’s gentle presence and entertaining behavior released a lot of my stress while I was working at night. I am sorry that a Mesocricetus auratus didn’t make the cover of this book.
Chapter 1. AIR
Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.
—Henri Bergson
Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), initially code-named Apollo, was created in 2007 as an environment for building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) running outside the browser while benefiting from desktop features. With AIR, developers can write desktop software using ActionScript, HTML, or JavaScript for the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms. Each application is installed as a standalone client application; its proper execution requires that the AIR runtime be installed in the environment. Figure 1-1 shows the Apollo and AIR logos.
Figure 1-1. Apollo and AIR logos
AIR version 2.5 focused on mobile development and introduced new features such as geolocation capability, accelerometer capability, and multitouch inputs. AIR is targeted at smartphones as well as tablet computers and netbooks.
AIR 2.5 and later supports the Android platform. Android is an operating system based on the open source Linux platform. It was initially developed by Google, and was further expanded by the Open Handset Alliance for use with mobile devices. Android runs applications developed using the Java programming language and packaged as an Android Package (APK) file.
Adobe adapted AIR as