Flash^R CS6 has some new features that will help you in testing your Android apps on your desktop. If you develop AIR applications for mobile devices in Flash, you know that the setting up and testing the apps on an actual device is a bit of a hassle. But until Flash CS6, we didn't have a way to test mobile specific features, such as Touch and Gestures, Accelerometer and Geolocation, with the desktop simulation. Now, we can test these features on the desktop version of the mobile preview with the new Simulator Controller. At this point, this feature is for AIR for Android.

Flash CS6 comes with several prebuilt templates that can help jump-start your projects. Let's test a few.

1. Start a new project from the AIR for Android Templates and choose the Swipe Gallery template.
   
   
2. From the Menubar, click Control - Test Movie - AIR Debug Launcher (Mobile)
   
   This will open the preview window as in previous versions but it will also open the new Simulator Controller. As you can see, there are three panels: Accelerometer, Touch and Gesture and Geolocation.
   
   
3. Open the Touch and Gesture panel
   
   
4. Check the box next to Touch Layer and Flash will put a semitransparent overlay over the preview window. You can control the Alpha of the overlay with the slider.
   
   We have several types of Touch simulations to choose from including Click and Drag, Press and Tap and Two-Finger Tap. The list of Gesture simulations include Pan, Rotate, Zoom and Swipe.
   
   
5. Choose the Swipe Gesture radio button to simulate this gesture.
   
   
6. Place your mouse cursor over the preview window and you will see a small circle. Click and drag the circle to simulate the swipe gesture and the gallery image will swipe to display the second image in the gallery.
   
   

Let's try another simulation and template.

1. From the AIR for Android templates, choose the Accelerometer template.
   
   
2. From the Simulator Controller, open the Accelerometer tab.
   
   As you can see, we can move the mobile device on the X, Y and Z dimensions via the control or we can use the slider controls.
   
   
3. Click and drag to tilt the mobile device and the green ball will move to simulate the accelerometer.
   
   

At first, the simulation seemed a little off to me. Then I discovered the Camera View options. When I switched from the Upright to the Flat Camera View, the simulation seemed to be more realistic.

*Adobe provided a copy of this software to me for review purposes.

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