At the Nokia Developer Summit my colleague Andrew Shorten showed attendees the new Mobile Packager Beta 1.1. We intend to release it up on Adobe Labs very soon and I thought it would be nice to give you all a sneak peak of the new features.
In this release we focused our efforts on created a cleaner installation, creation and signing workflow for the tool. We received a lot of feedback regarding the difficulties in getting setup and producing your mobile applications, and I’m really excited to see those answered in this upcoming release.
Installation
Many users found it difficult to install the various SDKs and associated technologies to enable them to build SIS and CAB files. This was due to a number of issues, for example the Microsoft CAB SDK ironically is distributed as a zip file. In Mobile Packager 1.1 we have integrated this SDK completely so alleviate these difficulties. To make the installation of the S60 SDK and Perl easier we have linked directly to those distributions, and we’ve provided a useful “Test Configuration” button to provide feedback on your setup.
Creating a Package
One of the great things about the Flash community is that many of you are great with interaction and design. The Create Package workflow is a direct result of your input, it’s now easier than ever to create a package for S60 or Windows Mobile quickly.
You simply pick a platform from the selector, select and Main SWF and the fields shown below will pre-fill with your project data. If it’s a new project then they will pre-fill with defaults based on the file name of the Main SWF, you can easily change the defaults. Notice that you no longer have to create a self-signed certificate or specify UIDs until you’re ready to sign.
Symbian Signed Ready
One of the biggest concerns from developers is getting through the signing processes. So in the new Mobile Packager 1.1 we focussed on simplifying the steps before you go through Symbian Express Signed. This step is where you apply your developer certificate and assigned UID to your application. We’ve also provided helpful links to help you get UIDs and these and your Publisher ID will be remembered for the lifetime of your project.
note: Experienced developers will see that we don’t use CER and KEY files, but simply the Publisher ID, exactly the same as Adobe AIR signing.
I think this is huge help for productivity and for new developers who would find it impossible to create CER/KEY combinations. Though as well as driving these new features I have been quietly working with the Symbian Foundation to streamline their workflow. Those of you that have been through this will notice the changes, there are more to come later in the year that can only be described as game changing.
Preparing for SymbianSigned
Once the Packaging process has completed all you have to do is zip up the SIS file, pkg file and a Readme.txt. You can simply rename the metadata file for that purpose since it holds all of the relevant information.
Finally you click on the SymbianSigned button on the Packager and you’ll go to their website for the final online signing steps.
As before our reigning packaging queen Liz Myers is hard at work producing video tutorials on our new workflow. In these new tutorials we’ve focused on covering all the nasty (and boy were they nasty) unknowns like attaining Publisher certificates. We’ll also have a really interesting video on icon production and design with Adobe Illustrator, and ideas for marketing your applications.
Like I said, it’ll be with us soon and 40,000 of you need to remember to update.