Using Adobe AIR to develop Android mobile applications

Can anyone give a comparative information between developing Android mobile applications using Eclipse SDK and Adobe AIR?

Kindly share your opinion, anyon开发者_如何学Pythone who has already having any experience on developing Android mobile applications using Adobe AIR.

I have gone through articles on developing Adobe AIR but wanted to know if anyone found it useful. I am aware that Android mobile applications developed using Adobe AIR is supported for Android 2.1 and 2.2.

Thanks in advance.

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I will do my best to answer your question, though it's a little broad (if you could provide specifics on the information you need, I'd be happy to add more detail).

Firstly, there's a ton of information both from Adobe and from the Flash/Flex community on developing for AIR for Android. You can develop for AIR for Android using Flash and the Flash IDE or using Flex and the Flash Builder IDE currently in public preview on Adobe Labs (you can do straight ActionScript as well if you like).

One of the benefits of using AIR is that you can leverage your existing skillset in Flash/Flex/ActionScript rather than having to learn a new language. Another benefit is that yu can reuse code for existing Flash/Flex/AIR applications you may have built. Another benefit, and the one Sheikh mentions above is that Adobe is working on making AIR a cross-platform mobile runtime. If you search you will already find articles from Adobe and the community about people running AIR applications on the Playbook (the simulator anyway, since the device isn't released yet) and even using the preview Packager for iPhone to compile their applications to iPhone.

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Although I haven't worked with AIR, but what I feel AIR is for, is cross compatibility.

Its like you're not building for Android, you're building for AIR. and since Android supports AIR, your applications will run on Android device.

In future more Mobile OS will start supporting AIR, so if you code an app for AIR, there will be a huge possibility that your same code runs on different platforms like Android, Windows Phone 7, iPhone (perhaps :-P). Thus, it will be saving a lot of coding effort for coders.

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I have discovered that the cross-platform compatibility for AIR applications is quite good except for a few caveats:

1) User input boxes. They are generally not handled well in AIR applications. The popup keyboard can hide the input box, which it generally does not do with native JAVA apps for Android.

2) Real-time games. AIR for Mobile is SLOW. You may be disappointed if you try to develop any sort of real-time software.

3) Socket communication. This is my current peeve. I created a simple chat application in Flash and did some speed tests. This is in preparation for creating multi-player games for mobile devices. On the PC, the application can run over 200 messages per second to the server and get responses. On the AIR for Mobile, both on the iPhone and Android, it is about 11 messages per second max - and the app is doing nothing BUT sending and receiving the data strings. Add a layer of game play and the speed limitations could be crippling. This means real-time games may suffer if you need faster communications. It's plenty fast enough for turn-based or games that don't require lots of updates.

Basically, the cross-platform compatibility is nice. Just think about whether your particular project might be harmed by the speed issues as well as potentially poor handling of user input boxes. Do some testing.