Adobe MAX 2010 – Adobe Air and Mobile Apps: Interview with Joe Johnston, Senior user experience specialist, UniversalMind
Universal Mind just posted about their experience developing an app for the RIM PlayBook using the Adobe Air SDK and their announcement at Adobe MAX 2010 taking place this week in Los Angeles, CA.
In this six minute interview, I caught up with Joe to get his take on the project, his take on the Adobe MAX event and opportunities for Web professionals developing Mobile Applications with Adobe Air.
RIM PlayBook SDK Offers Smooth Development
According to the UniversalMind Blog, the team had the privilege to be one of the first companies to develop an app for Blackberry’s new tablet—the RIM Playbook. Here are some of our initial thoughts on developing in this environment:
The app we developed was a Fantasy Football application—the goal was for it to be both fun and easy to use. It was entirely built using Adobe Flash Builder and the BlackBerry SDK. The workflow allowed us to deploy a working tablet application in days with full touch and gesture interactions that you would expect in a tablet device.
The framework SDK is integrated into Flash Builder which made for a very familiar dev environment. Compiling the application and deploying it to the PlayBook Simulator is quick and easy with multiple ways to see your application in a working environment. Without a actual device in hand we relied on the Simulator to test all the interactions, so it was a key piece of the workflow.
We also reused several pieces of code, which made creating interactions even faster. The SDK controls made creating interactive lists a snap: all the kinetic interactions are built into the controls, like pulling on a list and getting the elastic snap that many users are familiar with. Integrating video is seamless with the built in video controls, which also allowed for customization. The framework also allows developers to create consistent applications using the array of controls that are built into the OS.
Since their SDK utilizes Adobe AIR, you can create tablet applications without the need to learn a new development languages. Taking existing AIR applications and deploying them to a tablet device couldn’t be easier.
With the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK you can now take those engaging applications and deploy thing seamlessly onto a BlackBerry Playbook with minimal code changes. Integrating those applications into the powerful BlackBerry network of information and integration.