Archive for 'Blog'

Android Development: First Impressions

Posted on 06. Jul, 2010 by perks in Blog

As the first of some more regular posts, I thought I’d start by putting up some first impressions of Android. This isn’t much more than some musings so apologies in advance if its a bit rambling and directionless… ;)

I’ve used an iPhone for over a year and have now been running an HTC Desire for about 3 weeks. I’m not going to compare the phones or OS directly, just my first impressions of developing for the Android platform as compared to my dalliance with iOS. I’m learning both and currently developing 2 apps, with the aim of releasing a version of each on both platforms.

The development IDE of choice is Eclipse. Which I am very familiar with as I spend a good chunk of my day in FDT. Google provide Android Developer Tools (ADT) as a free plug-in, and this coupled with the SDK gives you everything you need to get started. It’s very simple and I was up and running with a  HelloWorld example running both in the emulator and on device within minutes (the ease at which you can get a build up and running on device is particularly impressive). [...]

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New look!

Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by perks in Blog

Finally got round to sorting this site out. Went for a photoblog style in the end. Pretty happy with it.

The Ultimate Flash Development Environment

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by perks in Blog

I’m going to start this probably rambling and definitely arguable post by saying there is No Such Thing. There.

Flash projects come in many guises, and what tools you use on one may be unsuitable for another, so instead, I’m going to list and explain my personal choices, hopefully if you are new to Flash, or venturing out of the Flash IDE and looking for a more substantial development environment, you’ll find this useful…

First, lets get this out of the way… Mac or PC? (I’m not going to go into linux here – I haven’t used it for flash development, and I’m not convinced anyone sane would) ;)

I use a Mac. I haven’t used a Windows box for around 3 years. Initially this wasn’t a choice, I was given a Mac to work on in a new job and after 2 weeks realised I’d never go back. Other people have a different opinion. The rest of this post is relating to Mac based development but most tools are available for both platforms.

So, to the specific tools. Firstly, the basics, you are going to need some portion of Adobe’s Creative Suite, at the minimum Flash, but in all likelihood, at least Photoshop and Illustrator as well… I’m lucky enough to have been bought the Master Edition and (since the latest updates at least) all seems well and I’m finding myself becoming familiar with Soundbooth, Premier (not so good), After Effects etc as well. It’s unfortunate that Adobe seem to have a monopoly on these products, but whilst I have some minor gripes with CS4, overall it’s not a bad suite of software at all.

So far so good. Now to your coding setup. [...]

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