So, I have finally started to port Solitaire and Mahjong games to Blackberry Playbook and have some notes.
I would like to mention them here, mainly for myself, just as a reminder.
0. Latest Adobe AIR SDK supported by Playbook to date is 3.1.
1. blackberry-airpackager sometimes doesn’t pack all the files to .bar file, if they are not in the same directory as blackberry-airpackager. In my case, it didn’t pack .swf file. App will crash on start in that case.
2. In order to get your Author ID, you need to rename debug token .bar file to .zip, find it in manifest.mf file or execute the following command:
blackberry-airpackager -listManifest [your_debug_file.bar]
3. Description of bar-descriptor.xml file can be found here.
4. According to the link above, permission for the app can be set with <action> tag, while sample HelloWorld project from BB AIR SDK use <permission> tag. Which one is correct – have no idea.
5. Mochi doesn’t work with Adobe AIR Mobile, and I’m not talking about ads, nothing works and it’s been for a long time.
6. Some good guide to AIR apps for playbook.
7. Blacberry SDK for Adobe AIR API Reference.
8. App version for Playbook should be X.Y.Z, not just X.Y as it’s by default in AIR settings.
9. It is always good to verify your .bar file before submitting it to Blackberry with the following command:
blackberry-signer -verify [your_bar_file.bar]
10. Testing Playbook App, especially payments.
11. QNXStageWebView for showing ads inside your app. I’m going to try Leadbolt and Millennial Media for now.
12. Payment System for AIR on Playbook, quit easy to implement.
13. Regular payments (in games or in App World) might stop working after running you own application in development mode. So, you need to restart Playbook to get it working again.
14. Using native extensions for Adobe AIR.
15. If you need to get info (like expiration date) from your certificate file, you can do the following:
blackberry-keytool -exportcert -storepass [your password] -keystore [your_certificate_file.p12] -file output.crt
blackberry-keytool -printcert -file output.crt