How to Make Flash Apps for the Ipad !

Jul 27th 2011
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How to make Flash apps for the iPad
(For Designers:)

by Matt Wasser 26/7/11

Want to make apps for the iPhone and iPad, but clueless about where to start? Until Autumn 2010, developing for Apple’s wondertoys has been a closed shop. The standard programming language used for creating apps for Apple’s iOS is Objective C, so if you come for a design background, that’s highly off-putting. But a new dawn for Flash is here at last. It feels like the early days of the web again, and as I was a student in ’98 I missed that wave!

When I tell people I’m making iPad apps in Flash, they all say the same thing: ‘but I thought Flash doesn’t work on the iPad?’ Well, websites made in Flash are still not supported on the iPad, which is a shame, but there is now a bright ray of sunshine for Flash made apps for the iPad, which is going to be great for Flash animators like me, who know a bit of code, but will never be full-on developers. I’m now becoming a bit of hybrid of the two.

This ray of sunshine comes in the form of Adobe Flash CS5.5 combined with the Air 2.7 packager. After a 2-3 week wait for my iPad 2 in London, and then another wait to get my Apple Provisioning license setup, I could at last test out some animation on my iPad. I started with the Air 2.6 installed, and the results were quite slow, but I was still excited. My vector graphics looked stunning on the iPad’s screen. And then came the Air 2.7 SDK. The change in speed in CPU mode was instant and incredible. It apparently speeds up your app 4 times faster.

The following is literally my findings so far. I can’t say I’ve tried everything, and each day comes a new wall to climb and sometimes a eureka moment. I’m having to learn Actionscript 3 at the same time as testing on brand new device. Everyone on Adobe’s Mobile Forum is a pioneer. The map for interactive touch screen development is still being written..

Getting your Apple license and setting up in Flash

I was expecting the process to be much more complicated. It’s actually not too bad if you’re a flash user. You have to take some admin steps to get your provisioning codes, but after that, it’s all done through iTunes. Here are the steps. Useful links are below.

- You’ll first need to buy an Apple Developer licence first, which costs $100 a year. You cannot even test your app on a device until you have this.

- You need to have an Apple mac running Snow Leopard to be able to make apps in Flash. You can also use Lion, but it is too new to say if this is a good move!

- You don’t need to download Apple’s Xcode software. The last step is done through itunes. In the Air to iOS box > delployment tab > click the ‘More Info’ button for help.

Setting up your iPad project in Flash

Open Flash CS5 or 5.5. File > New > Select Air for iOS. Now we’ll set it to the iPad’s resolution. Click Modify > Document > set the size to 1024 width by 768 height. Next we’ll set up our export settings. Click File > Air for iOS. Here is what the dialogue box looks like: