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Archive for August, 2008

Using the Adobe AIR Install Badge

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Lately I have developed several small AIR application for clients. Sometimes the apps are the actual project, sometimes they are a tool to allow the clients to do something with project. Either way I find myself building quite a few smaller AIR widget applications for clients lately. David Tucker’s 10 common mistakes when building AIR applications lists not using the badge install for your AIR app at number seven. I have been happy with the results of using the badge install to distribute apps to clients.

The Badge Install is a mechanism that allows the user to install you AIR application from a browser. If the user doesn’t have the necessary AIR runtime installed, it will first install the AIR runtime followed by your AIR application. If the user already has your AIR application installed, it allows the user to choose to re-install, or simply launch the already installed application.

While there are examples of using the latest install badge that Grant Skinner put together. I haven’t seen any examples that use the latest SWFObject (v2.1) and produce html results that validate. The process is actually quite simple. You can download a finished example here

Build your HTML file
Build a simple HTML file with your DOCTYPE, head and body.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd'>
<html xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'lang='en' xml:lang='en'>
	<head>
		<title>Number Converter AIR application</title>
		<meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' />
		<script type='text/javascript' src='js/swfobject.js'></script>
	</head>
	<body>
		<div id='badge_div'>
			    To install this application you will need the <a href='http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/'>Adobe Flash Player</a>
		</div>
	</body>
</html>

In the head I bring in the SWFObject with a relative path via the “js” directory. In the body I have created a div with an id of ‘badge_div’, this is the div that will get replaced with the Install Badge SWF file.

Set up the SWFObject
I usually like to place all my SWFObject JavaScript in an individual .js file. For this example I am using the following JavaScript in a file named ‘badgeInstall.js’.

var flashvars = {};
flashvars.airversion = '1.1';
flashvars.appname = 'Number Converter';
flashvars.appurl = 'http://www.knomedia.com/air/numberConverter/NumberConverter.air';
flashvars.imageurl = 'assets/NumberConverter.jpg';
 
var params = {};
var attributes = {};
 
swfobject.embedSWF('install_swf/AIRInstallBadge.swf', 'badge_div', '205', '170', '9.0.115', 'install_swf/expressInstall.swf', flashvars, params, attributes);

These are the required flashvars parameters required to get the badge working:

  • airversion is the AIR runtime version required to run your application
  • appname is the name of your AIR application
  • appurl is the absolute address of your .air file
  • imageurl is the address (absolute or relative) of an image file to display in the badge. The image should be 205px by 170px.

      • The last line is simply using the SWFObject to replace the appropriate div with your Badge Install SWF file.

      Back in the HTML head you need to include a reference to the badgeInstall.js which results in the following finalized HTML document:

      <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd'>
<html xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'lang='en' xml:lang='en'>
	<head>
		<title>Number Converter AIR application</title>
		<meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' />
		<script type='text/javascript' src='js/swfobject.js'></script>
		<script type='text/javascript' src='js/badgeInstall.js'></script>
	</head>
	<body>
		<div id='badge_div'>
			    To install this application you will need the <a href='http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/'>Adobe Flash Player</a>
		</div>
	</body>
</html>

      There are lots of optional parameters that can be passed as a flashvar to the badge to customize the badge like changing the button label color, the application name color, etc. For a listing of all of these, see the demo included with the badge install swf.


      Badge Builder
      I’m actually finishing up a small AIR app called ‘Badge Builder’ that facilitates writing all the necessary HTML, JavaScript, etc to quickly create a Badge Install page. I’ll post it up as soon as I’m finished. Stay tuned.

      jason

Written by jason

August 29th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

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PixelBlitz Engine Released

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PixelBlitz Engine

Norm Soule has released v1.0 of his new PixelBlitz Engine. It is a system for utilizing BitmapData to represent your MovieClips and Sprites. There are several built in features (layers, pixel level collision detection, etc) but the most impressive reason for using it is the speed. There are several demos, full documentation, and commented examples. Definitely something to look at for highly interactive content, or game development. As I get into it a bit deeper I will put together a more detailed review and an example or two. At first glance this seems REALLY impressive.

jason

Written by jason

August 25th, 2008 at 9:27 am

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AMFPHP: Brimelow does it again

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With the Flash / Flex community buzzing about Adobe’s partnering with the PHP Zend framework, Lee Brimelow has put up two fantastic introductions to using AMFPHP within Flash at theFlashBlog.com. Both of the video screen cast are geared towards getting developers familiar with using AMFPHP, and as usual are quick, to the point, and efficient. Absolutely worth a look.

Jason

Written by jason

August 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

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