Creating a Flash Professional Android Project

This post and it’s brother Creating a Flash Builder Android Project are going to be really short and sweet. I just want to make sure that there are no places for questions.

If you are starting with this post I recommend actually starting with a previous post introducing AIR for Android Development. There is a ANT file there that you will want to have.

FYI: All these steps are also available in Developing AIR Apps for Android PDF provided by Adobe.

Step 1: Add Extension
Go to Help > Manage Extensions… and install the AIR for Android Extension for Flash CS5. (Yes, CS5 is required).

Step 2: Restart
Restart Flash CS5

Step 3: Create Project
Create a new AIR for Android project.

Step 4: Save
Save the the document.

Step 5: Write your App
Do whatever you want. Here I’m going to add text that says “Hello World”.

Step 6: AIR for Android Settings
Now we do the Android specific steps. Go to File > AIR for Android Settings.

With the settings:
Output File: Hello.apk
App name: Hello
App ID: Hello
Aspect ratio: Portrait

Step 7: Set up the Deployment…

On the Deployment tab, make the following settings:

• Certificate: Point to a valid AIR code-signing certificate. You can click the Create button to create a new certificate. (Android apps deployed via the Android Marketplace must have certificates that are valid for 25 years.) Enter the certificate password in the Password field.
• Android deployment type: Release
• After Publish: Select both options
• Enter the path to the ADB tool in the tools subdirectory of the Android SDK.
• Close the Android settings dialog by clicking OK.

Step 8: Update the AIR Descriptor file.

• Open the application descriptor (located in the directory where you saved the .fla file).
• Change the tag to and make sure that it contains a value of the form: number.number.number
  For example: 0.1.0
• Save the file.

Step 9: Publish
Now just go to File > Publish and you can export your .apk file. We’ll still need to install the runtime and the application on the emulator and/or device, but for now we have our .apk file ready to be installed.