January – the month of updates! BlackBerry released a new version of the PlayBook SDK and simulator yesterday (0.9.2). With the update, your password is required to interact with the simulator via the command line tools. This update changes the command line interaction slightly to accommodate for that.
Update 02/2011: This version is also compatible Tablet OS SDK version 0.9.3 which was released by RIM on 02/08/2011.
If the command line errors out, check to make sure the clock in the simulator has the correct time, matched to your computer’s clock.
FlashDevelop Template
Along with this update, the FlashDevelop template received a minor update. The BlackBerry tablet configuration file (blackberry-tablet.xml) now includes a <splashscreen>node that can be used to define your own loading screen for your application, a <permissions> node to tie into the new permissions API (must be uncommented) and an <autoOrients> node to turn enable or disable orientation changes within your app (default is false in the template).
What’s New
- Simulator Password field added to settings panel
- Settings file version updated to 1.2
- Commands in the generated batch files include the password flag
- Minor code enhancements
Bug Fix
- Hidden directories are not indexed in the file list for batch file commands.
Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for developing this. It’s been a huuuuge help!
I don’t know how many people have bumped into this, but I had a bit of a struggle at first, trying to get FruitBat to work. It would open the command window, but the batch script that it executed always produced errors rather then connecting with the playbook simulator.
It took me a while, but I figured out what was wrong, so I thought I’d share my experience:
Like many developers, I use cygwin on my Windows machine, to provide gnu command-line utilities (find, grep, ls, etc). I’ve also added the cygwin “bin” directory to my PATH environment variable.
The problem is that, when FruitBat sends its commands to the shell, it uses the “find” command, and my computer gets confused (trying to execute the posix “find”, in the cygwin bin dir). For me to get FruitBat to work properly, I had to remove cygwin from my Windows PATH. After that, everything works perfectly.
(BTW: I went looking in the AppData folder to see if maybe there was a template shell script that I could modify, maybe replacing those DOS commands with equivalent POSIX commands. No such luck. But maybe in a future update, you’d consider having a customizable template like that? Thanks!)
Hi Benji – Thanks for posting about this. I’ll have to think about the template idea. At the moment, I’m not sure of an elegant way to do that with how things are put together.
Hi,
I’m facing a lot of problems installing the tool. It installs and when I want to start it I’m getting a message that the right air version wasn’t found and I should download and install the newest one. Guess what, theres already the newest version installed. Do you have any suggestions what to do?
Thx!
Hello– I saw your posting on a Flash forum and sent you a reply via twitter yesterday morning. FruitBat is standard as far as AIR is concerned. It only requires AIR 2.5 or above. It is packaged as any other AIR application that uses the extendedDesktop profile.
I’ve just tested the install on a Windows XP SP2 machine (I saw you’re using XP) and it worked perfectly, including installing an update to AIR to version 2.5.1. As soon as it installed, it opened and ran exactly as it does on my Windows 7 machine.
From your posts on the forum, with bad Google translation to English, I’m confused whether it is FruitBat giving you the issue or AIR itself. Which did you have trouble uninstalling? Have you checked the AIR install log to make sure it did install 2.5 properly?
You also said int he forum that your other AIR applications are still working. Which version were they made for? Can you run any AIR application made for AIR 2.5?
Here are a couple of forum posts from the Adobe forums:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3200280
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/737752
Also: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/403/kb403150.html
I’m afraid I can’t give any more help than that. Maybe this will give you some idea of where to start and what to do. If you continue having issues with the installation of AIR, maybe someone in Adobe’s forum can help.
wow, hey :) I didn’t knew that you were reading the flashforum. what’s you nick? I seldom check twitter, I’m following to many people… that confuses me…
It wasn’t a problem to uninstall FruitBat, so the app seems to be fine. Air gave me an Error, when I’ve tried to uninstall it. Where can I find the install.log?
I’ve only one app running along with air, thats this one: http://www.nulldesign.de/projects/simpletimer-2/
(Oh, when I visit the website I’m getting the same error.) I think it’s build for Air 1.5, but I’m not sure.
What I’ve also tried was to throw out every piece of Air using Ubuntu. After that I’ve cleaned the registry, but this didn’t helped.
Thanks so far for your help, I’ll have a look how to solve this and post the solution afterwards here.
I saw the forum post in my stats and visited from there. I’m not a member; only a viewer.
For AIR’s install log, according to the FAQ link posted above:
Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\AIR\logs
Windows Vista / Windows 7: C:\Users\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\AIR\logs (You must “show hidden files and folders” in View settings on your OS to see certain folders.)
I downloaded and installed SimpleTimer and it is built for AIR 1.5, so it can’t be used as an indicator of whether or not AIR 2.5 installed properly.
You can also look in Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel to see which version of AIR is installed. After the list loads, click Adobe AIR, then there should be a text link underlined that says “Click here for support information” (at least in the English version). When that link is clicked, you’ll get a popup that lists the full version number installed.
Good luck with getting it fixed; I hope you are able to make it run. If you do find a solution, please do come back and post about it. It may help someone else later.
Hey Love this app and followed you Flash Develop guide. Everything is up and working except that when I run “Package & Install” in fruit bat I get the following error in the Command Window:
…
[Fatal Error] blackberry-tablet.xml:9:3: The content of elements must consist of well-formed character data or markup.
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The content of elements must consist of well-formed character data or markup.
at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.DOMParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at com.qnx.bbt.xml.BbtExtensionXml.parseBttExtensionXml(BbtExtensionXml.java:42)
at com.qnx.bbt.xml.BbtExtensionXml.(BbtExtensionXml.java:37)
at com.qnx.bbt.xml.AppDescriptorXml.insertQnxNode(AppDescriptorXml.java:99)
at com.qnx.bbt.bar.BAROutputStream.rewriteAppDesc(BAROutputStream.java:86)
at com.qnx.bbt.bar.BAROutputStream.addDescriptor(BAROutputStream.java:76)
at com.qnx.bbt.bar.BARPackager.addSpecialFiles(BARPackager.java:78)
at com.qnx.bbt.bar.BARPackager.createPackage(BARPackager.java:193)
at com.qnx.bbt.packager.AbstractPackager.parseDescriptorAndCreateBarManifest(AbstractPackager.java:319)
at com.qnx.bbt.packager.AbstractPackager.doRun(AbstractPackager.java:149)
at com.qnx.bbt.packager.AbstractPackager.runPackager(AbstractPackager.java:91)
at com.qnx.bbt.airpackager.BarAirPackager.main(BarAirPackager.java:44)
[Fatal Error] blackberry-tablet.xml:9:3: The content of elements must consist of well-formed character data or markup.
…
Error: The content of elements must consist of well-formed character data or markup.
Sorry about the dump but hopefully you have some insight.
All my app does is have a QNX Button added to the stage.
Hmm seemed to figure it out – on line 9 of the blackberry-tablet – just comment that out and it works fine.
Sorry about the stack dump
Thanks for positing your solution, Phil. That’s an error on my part in the blackberry-tablet.xml template file (I missed the ! in the comment start tag). I’ll fix it and upload a new version of the template.