A bit harder part was handling events. Air for Mobile supports touch and multi-touch events but generally you have to choose whether to use multi-touch, gesture or none. If you use gesture mode you can use defined gestures and all other simple events are interpeted like mouse events.  Choosing touch mode will enable you to have more control over events e.g synthetise you own gestures. When you decide not to use touch events, all will be interpreted as mouse events, and is advised to use when app is intended to run on touch and non-touch devices. My choice was to use touch and I was able to enable horizontal swipes between app screen as well as scrolling and taping for selected items. Of course mouse over events do not work on mobile devices.
After spending couple of days I was converted from Android ignorant to Android developer, and here are big thanks to Adobe. Being able to use the same, well known and adapted technology is a great thing which brings down entry-barrier into Android development world. Every Air/Flex developer will be able to create mobile versions of application using technology that is well known to him, using the same controls, effects and back-end communication. Only thing that changes is visual – but it is something you cannot avoid, and events, but it is nothing much different from ordinary mouse events.

Release date is said to be second half of 2010 so I expect to have final version of Air this autumn, but already there are plenty of apps in web. The only problem for me was unable to test it on real device – I don’t have Nexus One.

• new set of skinnable Spark components and skinning architecture which leads to better separation between data and view
• introducing FXG declarative syntax for defining graphics
• two way data binding

But if you want to explore full list of changes and improvements to framework, there is a “Flex 4 features and migration guide”, which could give you more information about it.

New set of Spark component architecture defines entirely new way of building application view. Now view and data are separated, and each of functional component can be skinned to look completly different than “default” one. For example you can skin radiobutton to look like button, but still have radiobutton functionality – single select or grouping. This feature is extremely useful, and makes life of developer much easier.

Spark components also adds some new features e.g better handling of text by RichText and RichEditableText controls which enables developer to handle text more efficiently and easily. My personal foe – Repeater could be replaced by Spark DataGroup component which behaves far more intuitive  and of course is suited to new skining architecture

Flex 4 introduces also FXG declarative syntax, it is similar to Degrafa, and in simple words enable programmer to create vector graphics by writing piece of MXML code. This alone is not a big deal, but please remember that there is a data binding mechanism – and having those two together implementing a custom bar progress indicator or some fancy buttons is much, much easier.

Finally we have databinding that works both ways, so when connected to e.g. RichEditableText you will got property synchronized with it’s text. The only thing to remember is to have property that need to be bound declared as public.

Flex 4 is a big step ahead, it resolves a lot of problems that was a pain in Flex 3. I will encourage everyone to use it since it is far better than Flex 3, in my opinion, and could save some development  time especially in skinning of application. Together with Catalyst and Flash Builder it will create a powerful platform for building RIA applications.

The desktop version is created in Flex with an AIR application as outcome, while the mobile version was based on Flash Lite 2.0 and developed using Flash. Both applications are based on the same design and both applications use Shared Objects to save the users favorite public transport lines. Part from that there are two very different solutions. Both solutions were developed within a timeframe of 70 hours!

Read more at http://mjl.makingwaves.no/

The main challenge when developing Flash content for mobile is to develop on a version that most available phones support. We decided to develop for Flash Lite 2.0 even though we lose a lot of today’s phones. But even phones with Flash Lite support have different specifications and it’s a jungle to find out which phone that supports which commands and so forth… but it is possible J

But the biggest issue with this application was loading XML. Flash Lite 2.x solutions are not very friendly to xml loading. It fills up the phones memory in no time. So the biggest lesson learned is to find workarounds if the first thinkable solution is to load xml data into the mobile phone. Part from that, developing applications for mobile phones is no walk in the park, but it’s really cool and not to hard either

With that in mind I have created a little showcase of a small AIR application. The application collects weather info from yr.no and is limited to showing the weather in Norway (for now). You are able to search for locations in Norway and get the weather forecast for that location. Using SharedObjects you can also save your favorite locations and set your startup location. The forecast is updated every hour so you always can keep up to date to how the weather will be on your location

Try it out by installing from http://www.svenway.com/applications/weather/

The application is created in Flex based on a simple Cairngorm architecture.

Features include support for all known and unknown media formats (videos, images and audio), a brand new 3D engine with physics subsets, Lingo is “gone” and replaced with JavaScript as main scripting language, text-renderer, a brand new interface and of course a vast selection of new Xtras (plugins).

Director 11 is not a competitor to Flash due to the lower penetration of the ShockWave plugin (4,5 MB). However, it sails ut as a competitor to AIR, and a serious one as many of the new Xtras are certified with Vista and OSX. Many of the new Xtras have capabilities far beyond the AIR environment.

Adobe is pinpointing the game-industry as well as the traditional video and e-learning markets with this new release. Personally I see it as an actor on the application-market for specialized task-applications as well.

Check it out here.

• O’Reilly has launched its RIA page
• Of course the Adobe has got great website and community
• Flex.org – name speaks for itself
• CFLEX – Community for Flex
• Actionscript.org – community for AS developers
• Actionscript.com – community for AS developers
• gotoAndLearn() – great site fulfilled with video tutorials
• RIAForge – the community for Adobe technologies related to RIAs
• RIAPedia, great site for news from the RIA world
• Flex Examples – great minethat can be digged for any useful tip you’re looking for or even, you would like to know, but you don’t – yet
• Macromedia news aggregator – say goodbye to i-am-looking-for-adobe-related-article, they will come to you

Some other very interesting links:

• 10 Adobe AIR must see applications
• 11 Top 2007 New Web Apps
• Top 10 Adobe Flex Misconceptions
• 42 tech items for Flex Developers to research, study and watch in 2008
• Choosing the appropriate RIA technology

I believe that list of other links, strongly related to the Flex and Actionscript 3, will be also helpful. Please, give me some time to choose some from my bookmarks

However I want to advocate the use of PureMVC. I tried to use a “semi-Cairngorm” approach on my latest project and having only mediocre knowledge of how Cairngorm works it took me too much time to wrap my head around it entirely. Maybe it’ll help if you could publish a hands on example made in Cairngorm.
I have now tried to make an ideal small-app in Pure-MVC and I find the concept of MVC-Facade much easier to grasp than the MVC-Service logic (This of course since I know the Facade pattern better ) I like the strict use of mediators and proxies, the way you kind of information-hide all the VO/TDOs known from Cairngorm.
The main critique of pure-MVC is that the strict-typing of retun values from proxies is gone, all you get is generic objects. This is a big flaw since you loose the ability ty type-check return values. You’ll need to know what comes back. However  I feel the same problem is present in the Cairngorm’s VOs as well? Or am I wrong.
Pure-MVC has scheduled a new release “soon” and I am curious of what to expect. If they address the few flaws they have now it’ll sail up as the best cross-language microarchitechture to use, since Pure-MVC is now language-transparent (ie .Net-compatible and SilverLight-compatible). Cairngorm is currently bound to ActionScript (AS3).
However… the word on the net is that “if you’re gonna use a microarchitechture…use Cairngorm”, so one day soonI’m gonna make an effort and use it