The Space For App Developers

Ever wondered how you can make Flex 4.5 ActionBar buttons look like native buttons on iOS? This is actually very simple to achieve, what you need are just a few lines of CSS code. Checkout the snippet below:

/* CSS file */
@namespace s "library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark";
 
@media(os-platform:"IOS")
{
	s|ActionBar
	{
		defaultButtonAppearance:beveled;
	}
 
	.backButton
	{
		skinClass:ClassReference("spark.skins.mobile.BeveledBackButtonSkin");
	}
}

As you can see in the code above I also used CSS media queries to have the proper style and skin class applied only when running on iOS devices. Below you can see the end result:

The code that implements the view above is as simple as this:

 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<s:View xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" 
		xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" 
		title="iOS buttons">
 
	<s:navigationContent>
		<s:Button label="Back" styleName="backButton"/>
	</s:navigationContent>
 
	<s:actionContent>
		<s:Button label="Button"/>
	</s:actionContent>
 
</s:View>

Recently I wanted to try the LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS) messaging feature on tablet devices. LCDS is a platform that lets you easily integrate Flash/Flex/AIR RIAs with JEE back ends, giving your applications full real-time capabilities on the web.

In order to run my tests I ported one of the LCDS demo apps that is included in the package to Flex 4.5 and published it to Motorola XOOM (running Android 3.1), BlackBerry PlayBook and the iPad. You can watch the results in the video below.

Below you will find links to my two video tutorials about OAuth authorization with Flash and Flex apps:

1) Introduction to OAuth for secure user and application authorization

2) OAuth in Adobe AIR applications built with Flash or Flex

You can also download example code from here.