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Akash Mehta
Akash Mehta is a web developer and freelance writer specializing in web application development. Check out his other work at http://bitmeta.org/.
Adobe AIR: Supercharged Development with Debugging
The AIR 1.5 update to Adobe’s flagship RIA platform is here, and with it a host of new features to supercharge your development. In this article we’ll look at the fantastic new debugging system, available in the Aptana IDE. Once again there will be a quiz at the end, so pay attention! The first 200 people to submit their answers will receive a copy of The Adobe Flash Platform ActionScript Reference for Rich Internet Application Development (that’s the print version) delivered to their door for free, thanks to Adobe.
Getting Started
Before we begin, make sure you have the latest update to Aptana and to the AIR plugin. You can install these using the instructions in our previous AIR article, under the section, A Powerful Tool for Building AIR Apps.
The latest updates are critical for this tutorial; if in doubt, restart Aptana and check for updates using Help > Check for Aptana Updates Now. You should have at least Aptana Studio 1.2.1 and the Apollo/AIR plugin 1.2.1. Use Help > About Aptana Studio to check your Aptana version, and click on the brown box to check your Aptana AIR version.
Everything we need to take the debugger for a spin is included. We’ll be using the Adobe AIR 1.5 application template, the AIR Introspector framework, and the jQuery framework.
What’s New?
The AIR 1.0 release included a useful but limited debugging tool in the AIR HTML Introspector. With the new tools in the AIR 1.5 debug launcher, Aptana has managed to recreate the debugging workflow in Aptana Studio, and provide step-by-step debugging, breakpoints, watches, and more. In this tutorial, we’ll run through how to debug AIR projects from start to finish. Veteran AIR developers can skip ahead to the Debugging on Wheels section.
Creating a Project for Debugging
Once Aptana is set up, close it, and fire it up again. You should see the opening screen:
Most of this workbench is irrelevant to AIR debugging, so we can simplify the perspective by closing all the views except Project.
Let’s create a new AIR project; open File > New > Project under Aptana Projects, and select Adobe AIR Project.
Click Next and give your project a name—I’ve chosen “Debug”.
Click Next, accept the default Application Properties, and click Next again. The default Window Options should be fine so click Next once more, and the Import AIR Frameworks dialog appears.
We’ll need AIRAliases and AIR HTML Introspector for this project. The latter remains unselected by default so add it and click Next.
Adobe AIR’s debugging system plays nicely with JavaScript frameworks. Add your framework of choice in the Import JavaScript Library dialog. Hit Finish, and we’re ready to roll!