something in the way

This is a collection of Adobe Illustrator Scripts that exports layers or artboards to PNGs of different densities (iOS Retina Display, Android Devices, etc).

How to install

If you place the script in the Adobe Illustrator CS5/Presets/Scripts folder, the script will appear in the File > Scripts submenu. If you place the script in another location on the hard disk, you can run the script in Illustrator by choosing File > Scripts > Browse.

How to use Mobile > General

The general scripts asks for 3 values in sequence:

1. The folder where you want to save the files.
2. The scale factor 1 = 100% = 160dpi = mdpi, 2 = 200% = 320dpi = retina display (these values are only valid if you designed for 160dpi aka mdpi).
3. A suffix if you want to use one, e.g., @2x for retina display in iOS. You can also leave it empty if you don't want a suffix or if you are exporting to android or iOS non-retina.

How to use Mobile > iOS

1. Choose the folder where you want to save the files.
2. Optionally you can add a sufix to the files.
3. That's it, all files will be saved with the appropriate names.

How to use Mobile > Android

1. Choose the folder where you want to save the files.
2. That's it, all files will be saved on the appropriate folders.

Note on exporting layers: Locked layers visibility will be ignored and also they will not be exported. For example, this can be used to keep global layers visibility or guide layers from being exported.

Download zip file here: 
Illustrator Scripts for Mobile

Android 4.0 was announced and the SDK was released. So, I’ve washed my hands, I’ve opened the emulator and I’ve started to dive into the new browser and see what’s in there and what’s not. Unfortunately it’s still Android Browser and not Chrome, but it comes in a better way.

Busy month

October 2011: Busy month for mobile web world.  Just a few days ago, I’ve blogged about Safari on iOS 5; yesterday BlackBerry announced the first mobile browser with WebGL support on the (future) PlayBook platform and a few weeks ago Amazon announced Silk, a new proxy-based browser for tablets.

And now, it’s the Android turn. Android 4.0 was released and while there is no real phone yet to test it on (the Galaxy Nexus will be available soon) I’ve downloaded the emulator and I’ve tested the browser comparing it to Android 2.3 (smartphones) and Android 3.2 (tablet) that I both have on my hands.

Google announced that Google Chrome will be the future of browsing in Android but it was not 4.0 the time for that.

Smartphones meets tablets

This version merges both smartphones and tablets, so smartphones jumps from 2.3 to 4.0 acquiring all the new things on the browser available on 3.x, including:

• SVG
• Motion Sensor API (accelerometer and gyroscope -on compatible devices-)
• 3D Transforms on CSS3
• XHR 2 & CORS
• File API
• HTML Media Capture API for camera/microphone access through file management
• Binary Arrays (Int16Array, Float32Array, etc.)

What’s still missing on Android 4.0

Unfortunately, there are still some missing APIs that are available on Google Chrome and on iOS5 -some of them-, including:

• No Server-sent events (BTW, does anybody use it?)
• No WebSockets
• No WebWorkers
• No IndexedDB
• No Web Notifications (that is a real shame for this platform – Firefox on Android is doing it-)
• No WebGL
• No History Management API
• No rich input controls! I’ve found a huge bug on the range input type (no rendering at all), and no date controls are working. Even it seems that Android 3.x has better support than 4.x (more testing soon)

New stuff

The new stuff for both smartphones and platforms I’ve found:

• Navigation Timing API, same API in IE9 on Windows Phone and in Firefox 7 for Android
• New Console API, but not working properly, for example there is a console.memory.usedJSHeapSize and console.memory.totalJSHeapSize attributes, and some new functions but I could not make them work yet.
• The HTML5 <keygen> new form is available
• Basic MathML seems to work

New things to know

Adobe MAX is here, and we’ve got a lot of news to share. Today we’re releasing Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 — you can download the release starting at 9:00 PM Pacific today. As we announced previously, there are lots of new features in Flash Player 11 and AIR 3, and one of the newest features that’s getting a lot of buzz is hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics rendering through Stage 3D, which will be available on Mac OS, Windows and connected televisions. It redefines what’s possible across the web. With up to 1,000 times faster rendering performance over Flash Player 10 and AIR 2, developers can animate millions of objects with smooth 60 frames per second rendering and deliver cinematic, console-quality games both in browsers and in apps. And a production release with support for Stage 3D for mobile platforms including Android, Apple iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS is expected in an upcoming release. For more information about Stage 3D and to see some sample apps, check out the Stage 3D games on the Adobe Developer Center.

Additionally, we’re excited that “Proscenium,” a 3D framework technology preview, is available on Adobe Labs. Proscenium will allow developers using Flash Builder to rapidly prototype experiences focused on simple content interaction and display, whether for simple games, visualization, or high-quality rendering of small object collections. Check it out and let us know what you think.

We previously announced the availability of the Starling 2D framework for stunning hardware accelerated, fluid 2D graphics, and you can check out a new game developed using the Starling framework, Whack! from BxyB. There’s also new information for available for developing using 3D frameworks like Alternativa3D, Away3D, Flare3D, Mixamo, and Minko.

And lastly, we want to extend a welcome to our newest developers and colleagues from Nitobi, makers of PhoneGap, which will soon become part of the Adobe family. With all of our announcements today, we believe developers will benefit from a workflow that allows them to choose the right tool for the right job, and we’ll continue to keep driving innovation in Flash so you can push the edge of the envelope for immersive experiences online.

We’ve already seen some early previews of games and apps that will be available in market soon, and there are now over 10,000 AIR apps in mobile markets.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll create. And there’s more news to come tomorrow, so stay tuned. You can watch the second day MAX keynote streamed live at 10am PDT, and be sure to check out the Flash Platform Blog for the latest updates.

Tom Nguyen
Sr. Product Manager, Flash Player & AIR / @tomng

Today, we note the availability on Android of Control, a WebKit-based touch interface also on iOS.

For visualists and interactive designers, it’s worth paying attention to one feature in particular: dynamic interface creation. Perhaps biased by the musicians who have tended to embrace them, touch interfaces have tended to rely on the static layouts favored by physical knobs and faders. That’s arguably the worst of both worlds: you lose the tactile feedback of physical controls, but you don’t add any of the flexibility of a display.

Control is an open-source application rendered in HTML5, powered by JavaScript and JSON, so it’s capable of anything you can imagine. But Charlie Roberts has already demonstrated how a dynamic interface could work. Using OSC, you can make control layouts on the fly. That could lead to more sophisticated software integration for visual and musical performance, new chances for collaboration and live rigs, and the ability to make an interface on someone’s device in an interactive situation.

We saw the last of these scenarios in the case of the iOS app mrmr, developed by Eric Redlinger. As proof of concept, I and others put together a gallery show using mrmr, at which interactive pieces were able to build interfaces on-the-fly on user’s iPhones and iPads. With Control, those horizons expand, no longer constrained to individual proprietary UI widgets on one platform (like iOS), but cross-platform, Web-based, and dynamic.

The video above I think does a good job of scratching the surface of what’s possible. More on that here:
Control 1.3: Dynamic Interfaces, jQuery integration & more

But dynamic layouts could go in many, many directions. Since this is especially relevant to visual performance, perhaps in modes of interaction not really possible in music, I’d love to hear what readers imagine. And do try Charlie’s app, whether on iOS, Android, or both:
Control

– and if you’re really ambitious, have a look at the source!

Appcelerator Titanium Studio™ is now released and available for immediate download! Upgrade today and improve your mobile development productivity with Appcelerator’s new enterprise-grade IDE built on Aptana Studio.

Titanium Mobile 1.7 is also available today. It’s now 5-times faster to build apps for Android and iOS has tons of upgrades, including universal binary support.

We had over 500 developers sign up for our new Titanium Indie and Professional subscriptions last month. Now we’re making it even easier by offering a 30-day free trial on both products. Test drive premium software in Indie and premium software and support in Professional.

Introducing Titanium Studio

Use Titanium Studio to rapidly build, test and deploy mobile, desktop and web applications. Take advantage of new functionality like code completion, Git integration and a full-featured editor. Manage Titanium projects, test your app in the simulator or on device, automate app packaging and much more … all from within the new Titanium Studio.

Titanium Studio is an upgrade and replacement for Titanium Developer. Titanium Studio is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that will enhance the user’s experience while developing on the Titanium Platform.  All of the latest Mobile and Desktop SDKs will be maintained and kept up to date by Titanium Studio.  In addition to the nice features of an IDE ( i.e. syntax highlighting, content assist, code validation etc.) Titanium Studio also provides tight integration with the scripts used to create and run Titanium Projects.

We strongly encourage all users to begin migrating their development workflow to Titanium Studio. Titanium Developer source code will continue to be available through an Apache 2 open source license.

Check out the video, "Getting Started and the Development Workflow with Titanium Studio"

Titanium Mobile 1.7

Nothing beats a Titanium mobile release and 1.7 is a big one. Here’s what’s new:

• Fastdev for Android speeds prototyping and testing by enabling local changes to become instantly available to your application while the simulator is running. This eliminates the time-consuming steps of packaging, building and deploying apps for each change.
• New cross platform APIs for TCP/IP networking: Sockets and Streams, and supporting APIs for managing Buffers and Codecs.
• Universal Binaries: develop a single app for deployment on iPhone and iPad
• Major improvements related to memory management and memory leaks for iOS (both iPhone and iPad) which substantially improves stability and performance.

Read the Titanium Mobile 1.7 Release Notes for the full list of enhancements and fixes. Download Titanium Mobile 1.7 from within Titanium Studio or at my.appcelerator.com.

New 30-Day Free Trial on

Titanium Indie & Titanium Professional

Our new Titanium subscriptions offer something for everyone, from indie developers to corporate development teams. As you download Titanium Studio, please choose the Titanium edition that is best for you:

• Titanium Indie—Free 30-day trial—get all the software you need to build great apps including: Titanium Studio with mobile debugging, Titanium Mobile, Titanium+Plus modules that extend your apps to the cloud, and early access to new software.
• Titanium Professional—Free 30-day trial—get all the Indie software plus access to Appcelerator helpdesk professionals. Yes, you can test drive support during the trial!
• Titanium Community—Free—get the core Titanium mobile SDK for iOS and Android and Titanium Studio (all current features except mobile debugging).

Upgrade to Titanium Studio now. Choose the free 30-day trial for Titanium Indie or Titanium Professional and you won’t be billed until after your trial period ends.

New Release Webcast

Join us for a new release webcast on June 21st, 9AM PST to learn more about Titanium Studio and the updates in Titanium Mobile 1.7. We’ll walk through several demos and have our engineering team on hand to answer your questions.

According to figures stated in the report, global tablet shipments reached 9.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2010 with Apple continuing to dominate the tablet market with a 75% global share. Although impressive, Apple’s share slipped 20% from 95% in the third quarter, thanks largely to the apparent success of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab which sold over one million units in two months after it launched.

Despite warnings from Google that its Android operating system at the time wasn’t specifically tailored for large-screen tablet devices, manufacturers rushed their Android tablets to market in the fourth quarter, offering low cost devices aimed at capturing early-adopters and those without the budget for an Apple device.

Strategy Analytics expects Android to increase share in the first half of 2011, we tend to agree with them. At the recent CES event, a number of high-powered Android tablet devices were announced, most running Google’s new Android Honeycomb operating system, software that Google hopes will tempt many users away from Apple’s iOS-toting iPad.

Apple is expected to announce its next-generation iPad within the next couple of months, rumours suggesting it will become available in early Summer. We imagine Apple will record phenomenal sales of its new tablet but as the tablet market continues to expand, Android tablets will continue to provide significant competition for consumer hearts and wallets.Image Credit

At first glance, you’ll see content that we’d previously shown you before: current conditions and a forecast for the next few days. But by moving the slider over the next 12 hours, you can now see a detailed hour-by-hour breakdown of the changing weather conditions. As you do this, keep an eye on the temperature, wind speed and humidity and see how all these conditions are expected to trend across the day. You may also notice that the background color changes throughout the day. Of course, as you scroll further down you’ll see our regular web search results for your query.

This new weather search experience is available only in English, but we have more updates on the way. We hope you’ll enjoy using it!

Posted by Nick Fey, User Experience Designer and Michael van Ouwerkerk, Software Engineer

Google Goggles 1.3 with improved barcode scanning is available for download in Android Market. Recognition of print ads and Sudoku solver is now enabled for the Google Goggles app on Android, as well as the Goggles component of the Google Mobile App on iPhone.

Honeycomb is the next version of the Android platform, designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. We’ve spent a lot of time refining the user experience in Honeycomb, and we’ve developed a brand new, truly virtual and holographic user interface. Many of Android’s existing features will really shine on Honeycomb: refined multi-tasking, elegant notifications, access to over 100,000 apps on Android Market, home screen customization with a new 3D experience and redesigned widgets that are richer and more interactive. We’ve also made some powerful upgrades to the web browser, including tabbed browsing, form auto-fill, syncing with your Google Chrome bookmarks, and incognito mode for private browsing.

Honeycomb also features the latest Google Mobile innovations including Google Maps 5 with 3D interactions and offline reliability, access to over 3 million Google eBooks, and Google Talk, which now allows you to video and voice chat with any other Google Talk enabled device (PC, tablet, etc).

Please stay tuned for more Honeycomb news from the Android team. For now, you can get a taste of Honeycomb by checking out this video.

Posted by Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering