A short article to describe what's new in ELIPS Studio, this time for Beta 4 (out today), and what's coming next in Beta 5.

Beta 4 is out!

Beta 4 has just been released, here are the goodies we've been preparing for you!

We have been hard at work this time on... Mac alpha version!

By (very) popular request we focused our tool team on bringing you a Mac version as soon as possible, and here we go!

Let's face it we still have some issues with it, but we need you to iron the last ones. It's why we are giving it only to the lucky ones who  are asking for it :-) ... and so are ready to help us to tackle the last issues, please send a message to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to be enrolled!

The Mac release allows you to... build for Windows Mobile, iPhone and Android on a Mac (yes sir it works!), Symbian is not there yet but will follow soon.
Also our simulator hasn't been fully ported, but you can already do most of your work that way (and as you are on a mac, it is just that easy to use the iPhone simulator :- ) )

Oh! Wait... You are on windows? We have something for you also...

Windows iPhone Development toolchain!

Yes you will be able to build an iPhone "development" application right from your Windows PC. See the subtile "development" everywhere, this means that the application we generate for iPhone, will run only on "some iPhones that are able to run unsigned applications". Also, the generated application code is (temporarily) not fully optimized.
This is very useful for development phases, but you will still need a Mac to sign the app in order to post it on the AppStore.

But watch what's coming next: as Apple is kind enough to use an open-source signing toolchain, you will see signing coming to windows later on, in addition to the full optimization of the code generated by this Windows toolchain.

To use it, simply select "Generate IPA Package" in the iPhone properties, see screenshot below:

Need more? Why not mixing native objectiveC code with your flex iPhone application?

It was already here, undocumented in the previous beta, but here it is: Native Extension, Emmanuel is posting a walkthrough [UPDATE: Done, check it out here]in the tutorial session right now, be prepare to play with the itunes library right from your AS3 code... Without any help from us!

Of course this is coming to other platforms, the next one being Android! And of course it is alpha for now...

Still hungry?...Why not taking a picture from Android and iPhone?

Your new friends are storeImageFileFromCamera and storeImageFileFromGallery from the openplug.elips.services.SystemAPI class, WinMob and Symbian are coming later.

And of course a handful of bug fixes and enhancements

As always Patrick has cooked a very complete Release Note (to be found in the download section, here) for you to learn everything about all the wonders of this new release.

Beta 5: What's next!

Variant management goodies!

Many phones, many platforms, how to help you handling all this complexity with a single codebase? We will show you! (optimized number of builds, CSS per platforms, etc.)

More Android

We will continue to push on this platform, bringing Native Extension, mapping of Android native widgets (like on iPhone), an optimized toolchain for the latest flagship Android phones, 2.1 support, more services...

And of course bug fixes, change requests or whatever new great features found on the forum!

-Thomas Menguy

Comments

fredericcox

+1

 

 

Cool! Many thanks for the update, is there a focus on getting the new features to work on all 4 major platforms or will beta 5 contain new features first?

Would be nice if existing features would be available on all platforms first (e.g. mob:HTML and the camera support)

Keep up the very good work ! :)

Monday 22 March 2010, 12:03

Cristian Livadiotti

+1

 

 

Thanks Frederic!
Short answer is: we will focus on quality, and improving the feature alignment between platforms, with focus on iPhone and Android, and then on Win Mob and Symbian.

Longer answer: for the next release, the focus will be on:
- some absolutely necessary features (esp this variant management Thomas talks about)
- general quality improvements towards our commercial release (including for the mac version)
- stabilization on platforms with focus on iPhone and Android
- as Thomas said, bringing Android to the level the iPhone, feature wise
- on Win Mob and Symbian: it will be more on a need to basis

Tuesday 23 March 2010, 20:10

edmargomes

0

 

 

this project is very good!!! Congratulations!!!!

The project will support in Flash Builder 4?

Friday 26 March 2010, 20:22

clivadiotti

+2

 

 

Hi edmargomes, and thanks for your comments!
Yes ultimately we'll support Flash Builder 4. Actually some of our users already got it working, check out in the forum.

Tuesday 30 March 2010, 13:32

dwelch

0

 

 

Are you going to post something that will explain what a "Generate IPA Package" actually does and how to deploy it?

Monday 29 March 2010, 16:38

clivadiotti

0

 

 

Hi dwelch,
yes we will, absolutely.
Cristian

Tuesday 30 March 2010, 13:34

snoopje

0

 

 

The LINK for the MAC version you provided points to the .EXE version ?
I really would like to test it, if I will be able to download it.

Saturday 03 April 2010, 00:02

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