AIR SDK 28.0 - problems publishing to certain iOS devices

[StephenPS]

Hi all,

I am having problems publishing to certain iOS devices when using AIR SDK 28.0.125.  

The problems I am seeing is that, when using this version:

a) the icon is not being shown properly (I get an empty icon on the phone screen) and,

b) when using the app the screen size is being read incorrectly.

The problem device is an iPhone 6.  When I publish to an iPad mini it works fine.  On the iPhone 6 I have put in traces that show it is reading the device as having the screen resolutions of an iPhone 4 so hence the display problems, although it is being identified correctly as an iPhone7 (which is I believe the correct internal name for an iPhone 6).  If I roll back to AIR SDK 27.0 or earlier it publishes fine too both these devices.

I have not updated the OS on the iPhone 6 or iPad mini for a little while.  I also have an iPhone X, where the OS is fully updated, and there is a possibly related problem here in that Animate CC 2018 (which is up to date) it freezes when trying to connect to the attached device.  Unplugging the phone then releases the Animate CC again.  If I load a build created using another device (using AIR 27.0) via  installr it actually runs fine on the iPhone X.

So at the moment both Animate CC and AIR SDK 28.0 seem to be struggling too handle the latest Apple OS.

I have built to an Android device using AIR SDK 28.0 and that works fine.

Has anyone experienced similar problems and found a solution?

Thanks

Stephen

[peter_nicolai_123]

Did you follow the instructions for the new way of packaging icons with AIR SDK v28 using the Assets.car file?

For the screen resolutions it sounds like an issue with splash images. We had previously been using <key>UILaunchImageFile</key> in the iOS portion of the app xml, and we had to comment that out and name them all starting with "Default" which solved a similar issue for us.

[StephenPS]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your response.

I did not use that method.  I publish direct to device for rapid testing/ development purposes.  The method you mention seems more suited to builds to be loaded to the Apple Store (although up until I have not needed to touch xCode at all even for publishing to the Apple store). 

Are you saying that it will not be possible to publish builds direct to device and that we need to use Xcode as an interim step?  if so could someone from Adobe please confirm that as it would be a significant step backward.  Or perhaps I have misunderstood that process.  If it is this change perhaps Adobe could expand on the new workflow as it's quite a change from my perspective.

I have checked that all the right icons and splash screens are included as that was my first suspicion, for both problems.  I do already have them individually named in the xml.  I do believe that they are correct and as evidence of this, using AIR SDK 27.0 with the same combinations of icons and splash screens work just fine.

Thanks

Stephen

[peter_nicolai_123]

For now it appears that you do need to do this step in XCode unless there is some other way to make an Assets.car file. Since you are using Animate CC maybe you can get some help in this thread:

iOS 11 Application has blank icon with Air 28

[StephenPS]

Thanks Pete for the confirmation and a quick look at that thread does seem to deal with the issue.  I'll take a closer look over the next few days and confirm.

Thanks again.

Stephen

[StephenPS · Accepted solution]

Hi Peter,

To confirm the new Assets.car method of including icons worked to sort the icon problem out.  I had previously misunderstood and thought this was an alternate route to publishing but now understand it's a one off (or at least one off for each time you change the icon).

In relation to the scaling for the iPhone 6 this did turn out to be a splash screen issue but there is a twist here.  I had all the right screens before and these were working fine for AIR SDK 27 but for AIR SDK 28 they needed to be a new set with more specific names, so I had to look at changing these to very specific names.  The correct list of splash screens and their names can be found here:

GitHub - mesmotronic/air-ios-launch-images: Blank launch images for use with Adobe AIR for iOS

I am still having problems connecting Animate CC 2018 to my iPhone X, running 11.2.5, for direct builds but that now seems to be an unrelated issue so I'll try and solve it separately and start a new post if I can't find a solution.

Thanks

Stephen