19 April 2013

I'm now an AIR BB developer !

In December, I ported my 4 apps to BB10 for the 2 port-a-thon.
It was easy but took some times to setup every needed tool.

I really liked the experience and I now plan all my dev for Blackberry too.

This week, Blackberry made the final move to buy me : I received the cash award (it tooks some times but in final, I got it!) and my so waited Dev Alpha C device, won because I made AIR apps !





The Dev Alpha C device is near the upcoming Blackberry Q10 with the infamous keyboard.
I'll be able to test on a real device, to be sure the user experience is great using the BB keyboard.

Again, thanks Blackberry, you can count on me even more now !

On a side note, these last 3 months, I earnt more money with Trash Mail on BB's App World than  on Google Play...another reason I'm now definitly a BBDevers ! :)

ANE Ads4AIR v1.0.1 + Android Sample app

One week after my first ANE release comes my first update !

While writing a sample AIR app, I noticed some bugs mainly related to the ANE's context.
Following doc and tutorials, I made a wonderful error : using a static context

On Ads4AIR case, using a static context is an error because if you ask for interstitial ad THEN a banned ad,  the banner ad request won't work...because it's stil initialized with interstitial context.

I fixed a lot of others memory leak and was able to code some workaround on Adfonic's limits.
Now it's time to work on the Blackberry !

Be free to
- download the new version (v1.0.1)
- make some tests on your Android device
- check the source of the sample AIR app

11 April 2013

BOOK : PhoneGap Essentials, Building Cross Platform Mobile apps



In my search to an alternative to Flex, I had to explore the PhoneGap way.
PhoneGap lets you embed a full HTML5low web site on a native application.
Used basically, it's an website to application converter.

I had the opportunity to read this book : PhoneGap Essentials, Building Cross Platform Mobile apps
It's important to note it was written in June 2012 : PhoneGap/Cordova is now at version 2.6 while the book is about version 1.5
Oh, and 'Essentials' doesn't mean 'Everything you should now' but 'The minimum you should now'.

I read in only a few hour because it's full of code you can bypass.
Anyway, it was very interesting to read.
Why ? Because I learnt that Phonegap is/was a total mess.
- API not working the same way on all platforms
- documentation not in sync with the code
- a lot of copy/paste to make for a real multi platform export
- trial and error again

I now have to find a book from 2013 which cover Cordova 2.x and see if they fixed all of this.
I really hope because it's already awful to code the html5low part, I don't want to lose more times with Cordova issue.

So, does it worth money ? No longer, all you need to know is on this post....unless PhoneGap/Cordova is still as poorly made as it was in June 2012

10 April 2013

My first ANE Ads4AIR : Ads from Admob, Adfonic, Inmobi and some others...

Today I release my first AIR Native Extension.
While only for Android for now, the next release should include BlackBerry support.

What is Ads4AIR ?
This group of ANE offers you alternative to Admob.
Some ANE already exist which give you access to Admob ads on Android and iPhone, my goal was to let you choose.
First, because Admob doesn't support Blackberry.
Second, because choice is the key and Google isn't the only one.
It also allows you to use the ads network you want anytime you want : when your user is from india, when admob returns no ads, when your user is on wifi....It's up to you !

Which are the ads networks supported ?
Adfonic
Adiquity
Admob
Inmobi
Inneractive
Madvertise
Smaato
I tried to support banner and interstitial for the most of them.
Unfortunatly, some SDK are buggy or work only on native Android app.
If you need another one, just ask me !

What's the licence ?
I tried another way to earn money : success sharing.
In fact, it's really simple : if you earn money with Ads4AIR, I'll earn too.
10% of the ads shown are from my own Adfonic account.
Since I understand developers could be afraid to not control every ad shown, it's still possible to register.
And since I'm a nice guy, YOU define the price.
Contact me for my paypal account, transfert the fund and I'll send you a serial id.

Where could I find it ?
On http://www.willna.com/extensions/
More ANE will come if this one is a success so...hurry up, use it and give me your feedback !