Troubleshooting getting your app from Flash CS5 to an Android Device

Alright, so my Samsung Galaxy Tab arrived today. And yes, I will cry a little bit the next time I check my credit card statement, but I’m hoping this pays off in the long run. It would be hard to call myself an Android developer without ever testing an app on an Android device. Like having a dinosaur ride without any dinosaurs. Anyway, tonight was the first night of messing with it, and I’ll record a video lesson soon, but while everything is fresh in my head I wanted to write down some notes about this long journey into night that did fortunately end with me getting a Flash CS5-created swf (app, whatever) onto the device.

The biggest problem it turned out was I had the emulator running the entire time in the background. After doing everything else I’ll list below, quitting the emulator (which was buried behind like 10 browser windows) was what did the trick.

The 2nd biggest problem I had was that I was working off a Flash project that had originally been set to create an AIR 2 file, and for some reason when I switched the Publish Settings to AIR Android, the Output file still wanted to be named with a .air extension. No good, you want the .apk extension. See images below.

The rest of the problems aren’t really problems, just settings you’ll need to adjust when your device is freshly unboxed. And by the way, I’m using the Froyo (Android 2.2 OS).

• AIR 2.5 must be installed but you can find this in the Market App on the device. Search Adobe AIR, and install it
• Go to Applications > Settings > Applications > Unknown sources  > Check on
• Applications > Settings > Applications > Development > USB Debugging > Check it On (unplug the device if its greyed out)
• And I’m pretty sure you need to Turn On USB Storage which is a little tricky if you’ve only had the device a few hours and have no clue where that is. Take your finger (any finger is fine) and swipe down from the top of the screen and you get a whole slew of useful settings that are kiiiinda hidden up there. Find Ongoing > USB Connected, press it and hit Mount. Thats should do it. You can go back to the Home screen or your Applications folder and do a test publish from CS5.

Nope, you don't want the .air extension

YES, you DO want the .apk extension

 

 

oh and finally, don’t ignore that message in the Publish Settings window in Flash thats telling you to find the Path to the adb executable in your Android SDK tools folder. You just need to download the SDK, and point Flash CS5 to where its at. Couple more images….

Yep, gotta do this too. I'll point ya to where this is in the screengrab below...

 

Path to adb executable in Android SDK tools folder