I’m delighted to announce that my book, Flash iOS Apps Cookbook, has been published and is available in paperback and various eBook formats including Kindle.

Written for both beginners and seasoned developers with a working knowledge of ActionScript 3.0 and Flash Professional, the book provides the recipes required to build native iOS apps using the Flash platform. Whether you want to create something new or simply convert an existing Flash desktop project, the relevant steps and techniques will be covered, helping you achieve your goal.

For those new to iOS development, I have paid particular attention to the fundamentals, focusing on the groundwork that many newcomers find daunting. The first few chapters show you how to join the iOS Developer Program, create the required developer files, and build your very first application using Flash Professional. For those with a firm grasp of the basics, there’s plenty to learn, from working with device sensors, to maximizing graphics performance using hardware acceleration.

Here are just a few of the things you’ll learn from the book:

  • Build your own apps, port existing projects, and learn the best practices for targeting iOS devices
  • Compile, configure, and publish native iOS apps directly from Flash Professional CS5 or CS5.5
  • Deploy your apps to iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
  • Respond to gestures and multi-touch
  • Detect location and movement using the geolocation and accelerometer sensors
  • Target multiple screen resolutions including the Retina display
  • Accelerate graphics performance by utilizing the GPU
  • Implement FLV playback and high-quality H.264 video
  • Capture and manipulate video from the built in camera
  • Overcome performance and memory constraints
  • Utilize iOS-specific features with native extensions

More Detail:

You can find additional information, including a sample chapter, on the book’s official page at the Packt Publishing website. Additionally, I’ll be maintaining a dedicated page from my blog, where you will find additional tutorials, links to resources, and answers to frequently asked questions.

If you pick up a copy of the book then please do let me know what you think.

  1. is the early RAW version different from the official release? I have the early RAW version from PACKT.

    Patrick
  2. Hi Patrick. The book has undergone several revisions since the release of the RAW edition. Most of these changes were due to the excellent feedback from the book’s technical reviewers. Some chapters have had a lot of additional work done to them and I’ve also added some content for more recent versions of AIR that I wasn’t originally planning on covering. If you’re planning on using the book’s accompanying code samples then you may have difficulty matching them to the recipes within the RAW version due to these changes. Many of the chapters however, are relatively unchanged and the RAW version does benefit from additional recipes that didn’t make it to print. Hope that helps.

    Christopher (Author)
  3. The book is great sofar! Really nice as guide / reference book when working on ios apps.

    BD
  4. Thanks for the kind words. Really glad you’re enjoying it.

    Christopher (Author)
  5. Hi Christopher

    Books looks good, just a couple of questions if you don’t mind:

    1. Does it cover the whole publishing process, right from compiling in CS5.5 to being live on the app store?

    2. Do you cover how to handle retina/non-retina devices and both iPhone and iPad for an app?

    Thanks

    Billy

  6. Hi Billy,

    I cover the provisioning and publishing process for development primarily, with some detail regarding app store submission, which is similar. There is also this great article on Adobe’s Developer Connection website which compliments much of what’s featured in my book and should ensure you get your app submitted without any problems.

    Chapter 8 covers Retina/Non-Retina and the creation of universal apps. Specifically it has the following recipes to get you started: “Targeting a device”, “Targeting the Retina display”, “Supporting multiple resolutions”.

    Hope that was helpful.

    Christopher (Author)
  7. Sounds perfect Christopher, I’m ordering a copy now!

  8. Thanks for the purchase Billy!

    Apple has made a slight change to their provisioning process since the book went to print. It’s a minor change but has caught a few people out while working through chapter 1. I’ve updated the Errata section on the book’s page detailing where they impact and any necessary workarounds.

    Christopher (Author)
  9. Hi Christopher

    The book arrived and I finally had time to take a first look at it this morning – very nicely laid out and easy to follow!

    I went straight to the section I needed info on (handling multiple resolutions) and within 15 minutes I was up and running, and have now started porting my app to iOS. Great book, highly recommended!

    Billy

  10. Thanks Billy and good luck with your app.

    Christopher (Author)
  11. Hi Christopher,
    I bought your book yesterday, thanks a lot for the effort. I am having some trouble with the H.264 playback though. I can’t seem to get it to work at all.

    I’m not a flash, AS or an app expert, I’m just a designer using flash as a quick prototyping tool, so I couldn’t say for sure what the problem could be. My guess is that apparently I’m getting a problem at the “video = stage.StageVideos[0];” line. (I just placed an alarm text after each code line to see up to which point it comes, and this is where it stops)

    Even by trying to create the app using your original (final) recipe files from the bundled code download, the app just doesn’t run the video (it opens up and shows the controls, but no video). The only thing I changed on the original files was the output device (iPad instead of iPhone) and of course the provisioning info.

    Any help will be much appreciated as I bought the book specifically to solve the video playing issues I had with previous experiments.

    Thanks!

    David Güiza Caicedo
  12. Hi David,

    There are a few things you need to check for when running H.264 video on iOS devices:

    1. If you’re using Flash Professional then please make sure you are using AIR 3.0 or above. Flash Professional CS5.5 only comes with AIR 2.6 installed, which doesn’t support H.264 video. If you need to install the latest version of AIR then please follow these instructions on my blog: http://www.yeahbutisitflash.com/?p=2949

    2. Flash Professional CS5.5 (and Adobe AIR) does not support H.264 video playback when testing on your desktop/laptop computer. If you try to test/run the code directly from within Flash Professional then you’ll receive a runtime error. Instead, publish the FLA (select File | Publish from the Flash Pro drop-down menu) to an IPA file then test it directly on your device.

    3. Also please ensure that you copy the test H.264 video from chapter12\resources\video.mp4 into the same folder as your FLA. Also ensure that the video.mp4 file is set to be bundled with your IPA file by adding it to your Included Files list. You can do this by selecting File | AIR for iOS Settings. Then from the AIR for iOS Settings panel, add the video.mp4 file to the Included Files list. You can find out more info about this on the “Bundling the H.264 Video” section on page 331.

    4. Finally, from the AIR for iOS Settings panel, please also ensure that the rendering mode is set to “GPU”.

    Please let me know if you continue to have problems.

    Christopher (Author)
  13. Hi Christopher,

    Thanks so much for your reply. I was indeed missing the whole AIR3.0 story and after doing that the H.264 video loads and plays quite smoothly.
    I still have a problem with the audio though. I don’t get any sound from the loaded video (I tried both with the test video bundled with your files as well as with my own video). I had this problem previously with embedding FLV videos and couldn’t figure out what was going on.

    I’m running the app on an iPad 1, the video is encoded as: H264 – MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1), and audio is: MPEG AAC Audio (mp4a)

    Any advice?

    David Güiza Caicedo
  14. Hi David. I’m glad you got the video running. As for the sound issues, I’ve just re-compiled and tested the code at my end on a 3rd gen iPod touch and iPad 2. Both the video and its audio worked fine. I should be able to get my hands on an iPad 1 tomorrow at some point. I’ll let you know how I get on.

    Christopher (Author)
  15. Hi Christopher

    Is there a problem with the final chapter downloads on the Packtpub site, I can’t get them to work?

    I’ve tried the URLs from the book, and also the links on this page: http://www.packtpub.com/flash-cs5-iphone-development-for-ios-applications-using-adobe-air-cookbook/book

    Any idea if/when those links will be fixed, or if there is an alternative download locations?

  16. Hi Billy. There seems to be a problem with the download links when using Google Chrome. Hopefully Packt Publishing will resolve this issue soon. In the meantime I’ve emailed the PDFs for those two chapters to you. Alternatively you could use Internet Explorer, which does seem to work when downloading the chapters.

    Christopher (Author)
  17. Hi David. I’ve now checked the H.264 video recipe that comes with the book’s code bundle and its audio works fine on my iPad 1. Could you double check that the iPad’s volume isn’t muted or too low when you’re running the app, as it’s something that has caught me out a few times when testing audio code on devices.

    Christopher (Author)
  18. Hi Christopher,

    I bought your book via Kindle. Very well written. I am in the process of creating an ios app in Flash CS5.5 and was wondering if, in addition to the camera and geo sensors, if there is access to the iPod music library?

    Any help is greatly appreciated.

    Tom

    Thomas
  19. Hi Tom, The Adobe AIR SDK does not provide support for the iPod music library. It should be possible to write a native extension that does this, however I’m not aware of any that currently exist.

    Christopher (Author)
  20. This is really great post. it’s helpful when working on iPhone app.
    thank you for this amazing reference book.