How do we meet our clients’ needs in the mobile landscape? Each native application we build is unique in its own way, but they all have a similar foundation. Client A may want social integration and Client B might want a remote database that syncs with the application’s local database. Although the clients have different needs, they both have tight deadlines and limited budgets, and both clients expect their application to perform like a native application on a multitude of different devices.
Cross-platform mobile application development is in high demand, and has proven to be very challenging for many agencies. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) came to us with many of these same goals and objectives. By utilizing Adobe AIR, we were able to meet our client’s needs and build the application “2012 Team USA Road To London Olympics.”
Adobe
Adobe is dedicated to bettering the mobile landscape, providing developers with the best technology to help them do their jobs better and faster, and providing the world with the best experience through the use of applications built with their technology. And it was quite evident to us, especially working very closely with their Evangelist team, Adobe has the ability to improve their technology and stay current with technological advances. This gives our company the assurance that the tools we are using are the best, and that our clients will receive a superior product, and our users will have an excellent experience.
Adobe AIR provides many solutions to meet our clients’ and our company’s business objectives, and to help create successful cross-platform applications. The technology itself is mature and stable and Adobe continues to improve AIR to keep up with the advancement of technology. Adobe AIR gives the developer a lot of control over all aspects of the application, allowing the developer to fine tune a single code base that runs well and consistant across all devices.
Experience, Community, and Resources
The Flash community is large and established. We were able to easily find tap into the knowledge of the community and quickly addressed the challenges we faced, and to meet the tight timeline for the launch of the Summer Olympics.
The Technology
Adobe AIR handles many difficult tasks with ease, such as loading local and external data and assets. Storing data locally in a database or as individual files is simple. Building the user interface for different screen sizes and resolutions can be done quickly and easily. It also provides the developer with the ability to control and fine-tune code, data, and graphic optimizations. This is extremely valuable when developing a single code base that needs to run on devices that vary in screen size, resolution, and hardware. This technology allows us to achieve consistent performance across multiple devices.
Adobe AIR’s native extensions allow Flash developers to access iOS and Android APIs. Flash developers are no longer restricted to the AIR and Flash API, but can now access lower level APIs, thus providing the best possible solutions for their clients.
Conclusion
There are many available options for cross-platform native application development and at the end, we had to find the right tool for the right project. When faced with the challenge to meet the needs of our clients’ and our users’, we turned to Adobe AIR for this particular project to build high performing applications with a single code base, and we could not be happier with the results.
