When mobile devices hit the scene just a few years ago, an application developer created apps for only a few devices. Now, we have many more devices and each one seems to have its own screen size and supported functions. With the new Flash packager for mobile devices, it's easier than ever to create multi-screen content. When it comes to testing your projects, Device Central CS5.5 is still one of the best ways to simulate the behavior of mobile devices on your desktop, even of those devices that do not support Flash.

It's almost impossible to keep up with all the new mobile devices and the various screen sizes. With Device Central's online library of the latest device profiles, you can be assured you are up to date when testing your project. This feature is very similar to Adobe BrowserLab where you can test how your website will display in various web browsers. The Library panel lists device-specific information such as the screen dimensions, color depth, platform OS and more depending on the device. You can also filter the list by platform, marketplace and other criteria. As in BrowserLab, you can create custom sets of device profiles in Device Central, which will enhance your workflow.

As you can see in the Create New Mobile menu, Device Central CS5.5 now supports AIR 2.5 and is integrated with the other Adobe software such as Flash Professional, Photoshop, Illustrator, Captivate, Fireworks and After Effects. You can also test your Dreamweaver projects with Device Central.

You might ask how testing your project in Device Central is different from Flash Professional's AIR Debug Launcher. With Device Central you can test real-life simulations of mobile devices on your desktop. For example, you can simulate user input such as multi-touch events, device orientation, geolocation and the accelerometer. You can also simulate server request and test memory consumption.

When creating mobile applications with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript libraries such as JQuery Mobile, Device Central supports the latest WebKit engine for viewing content from within a browser or within an application on a mobile device. You can test for media queries, font mapping, local storage, video and other HTML5 canvas features.

*Adobe provided a review copy to me free of charge.

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