Last year, Adobe^R and Apple^R were at odds about two issues. The first issue was that Apple did not want to allow Flash^R content to be played on their iOS devices. Therefore they would not install the Adobe Flash Player on their devices. The second was their announcement, just before the release of the Adobe Creative Suite 5, that the only apps that will be allowed must be created in C, C++ or Objective C. This eliminated apps created on third-party software such as Adobe Flash. As of now, we still can't play Flash on iOS devices. It will be interesting to see if this changes in the future.

However, later that year, Apple relented on the second issue and agreed to allow apps that were created with third-party software. So we can now create iOS apps using Flash CS5.5. Yes, I said 5.5. Over the months since the release of Adobe Creative Suite 5 (which includes Flash CS5), Adobe has built an updated Packager for iPhone which it has included in the CS 5.5 release. The bottom line is that this new Packager converts the Flash ActionScript 3 to native iOS code and you can now publish your Flash projects as native iPhone and iPad apps.

We can't cover the new Packager in detail in this intro article but let's take a look at some of the new features included in Flash 5.5 for iOS app development.

• You will create your iOS app from within the Flash workspace using the same familiar tools. You can code ActionScript and use the built-in code snippets. There a several new code snippets added specifically for mobile devices.
  
  
• Flash has some new built-in ActionScript to deal with the mobile Accelerometer and touch events that have made the user experience with tablet devices so very popular.
  
  
• Flash will optimize your project to run within the guidelines for iOS devices and output an IPA file.
  
  
• You can publish directly to your own iOS device and upload to the Apple App Store from within Flash. (You will need to become an Apple developer.)
  
  
• Flash 5.5 has a new dialog for setting permissions for your mobile apps such as accessing GPS and WiFi states, using the device's camera, recording audio and more.
  
  

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