Developing iOS Applications with Flex 4.5

Preface

Introduction to iOS

Apple originally introduced iOS in January of 2007 as the operating system for the iPhone, under the original name of iPhone OS. In June of 2010, Apple renamed its mobile operating system to iOS.

This book will walk you through the creation of your first Adobe AIR application using the Flex 4.5 framework and provide examples of how to interact with the device’s components. These include GPS, the camera, the gallery, the accelerometer, the multitouch display, the StageWebView, operating system interactions, native components, and more.

Who This Book Is For

Developing iOS Applications with Flex 4.5 is a book targeting all levels of developers. It starts with a basic Hello World application and then quickly moves to more complicated examples where the iOS APIs are explored.

Who This Book Is Not For

This book is not for developers who are interested in developing native iOS applications. This book will only provide examples of iOS application development using Adobe Flex 4.5 and ActionScript 3.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

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This Book’s Example Files

You can download the example files for this book from this location:

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Where necessary, multiple code samples are provided for each recipe to correspond with the different development environments. Each sample will be separated into a folder for the specific environment. Each application should include the needed code for your environment as well as an application descriptor file.

Using the Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. In addition, answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. However, selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Developing iOS Applications with Flex 4.5 by Rich Tretola (O’Reilly). Copyright 2011 Rich Tretola, 978-1-449-30836-0.”

If you think your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given here, feel free to contact us at [e-mail].

How to Use This Book

Development rarely happens in a vacuum. In today’s world, email, Twitter, blog posts, co-workers, friends, and colleagues all play a vital role in helping you solve development problems. Consider this book yet another resource at your disposal to help you solve the development problems you will encounter. The content is arranged in such a way that solutions should be easy to find and easy to understand. However, this book does have a big advantage: it is available anytime of the day or night.

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife and best friend Kim, as well as my daughters Skye, Coral, and Trinity, for their love and support. I love you all!

I would like to say thanks to the Adobe Flex team and the members of the Flex CAB who provided early access and support to the AIR 2.7 and Flash Builder 4.5 tools and documentation.

Thank you as well to Mary Treseler from O’Reilly for providing this opportunity.