Multi-touch in iPhone app

[BlueSteelIRL]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to these forums and just have a question that I can't seem to find the answer to.

I'm building an app for a project that requires the use of mutli-touch, not neccesarily gestures but

more like triggering two seperate events on differant parts of the screen at the same time.

To be more specific, say i have one movie-clip that triggers an event by a mouseOver listener and another

that triggers an event by a mouseDown listener, is it possible to have these events trigger simultaneously when the

user places a finger on each movie clip at the same time?

I haven't been able to locate a tutorial or any information on this apart from ones on gestures to zoom in and out.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks

[somascope]

A few things...

• You can't create an Flash apps for the iPhone (unless Steve Jobs has changed his mind about Adobe and now allows Flash on iPhones & iPads)
• You can do gestures & multi-touch controls / event handling, but you would have better luck doing this with Flash Builder (Flex) or the Flex SDK, where these things are part of the API (built-in).
• You would then need to publish your app as an AIR app

There's lots to learn if you follow through on these things - but, with Flash, an AIR app built with Flex is probably the only way.

[BlueSteelIRL]

Thanks for the response. What I meant was building an iPhone app through Flash CS5 using actionscript 3, CS5 allows flash content to be exported as an ipa (iPhone app) file. Not sure if they're allowed in the app store but this is just for a college project. I was able to fix the issue by enabling multitouch using touch events on several movieclips. App works great on my iPhone but a tad bit slow (its a 3G).

[xTLS]

Soma, Apple began allowing Flash apps last fall and they've been available on the store for months.

[somascope]

Really? Interesting - I wasn't aware of that, and would like to learn more. I wonder why this message, from Steve Jobs, is still up then:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

xTLS - Can you point us to where Apple says they allow Flash content & apps on their devices?

[xTLS]

That article appears to be about supporting Flash from within the browser. Are you aware of the Flash CS5 "Packager for iPhone"? This is a new feature for CS5 that allows a Flash document to be exported as an iPhone "App", which can then be sold on the iPhone store.

If you want to learn more, you can just Google Flash iPhone packager.

[somascope]

I am aware of the packager (many folks were really excited about this months before the release of CS5), but that was something Adobe created by Adobe. It was a little bit later (before CS5 was released) that Apple decided to not allow Flash apps on Apple's devices. The two are not mutually inclusive.

Unless you, or somebody, can show that Apple has actually changed their mind (which they didn't; it would be one of the biggest web-oriented bits of news across hundreds of websites if they did), Flash is not allowed on Apple's devices.

But that being said, I suppose people can maybe still try putting an app on their device, though not via the iTunes store.

[Guest]

Anyone can publish an .ipa for inclusion in the app store - doesn't matter what it was made in - Flash, Untity, etc. apple changed that quite shortly after it was implemented. Flash player has never been allowed on apple's iDevices - that was not implemented after the other thing - it was never allowed. I've published quite a few apps now, for iPad, using Flash. Except for the packager's .ipa being really slow compared to native code, it works quite well and you can do quite a lot.

[xTLS]

Haha, they did feature this as a big news story on hundreds of websites; I guess you've been living under a rock for the past four months . Should have gone with the Google search . Here, I bet you one hundred billion dollars that Apple retracted their position and you can sell apps made in Flash from the app store.

[somascope]

Well, I must admit then that I've been under a rock 😉 I'm all up for being educated on things (the older I get, the more I don't know!).

http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/09/apple-opens-up-releases-app-store-review-guidelines/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/apple-lifts-app-store-flash-ban-publishes-app-review-rules/

Although, I'm curious what this means: "To be clear, that doesn’t mean Flash is coming to iOS as a plugin: You still won’t be able to view Flash content on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. This change in Apple’s policy just means developers can use third-party tools such as Flash to create apps sold through the App Store."

Thanks, ya'll.

[Guest]

There should be info in the Docs - there's a gesture class for AIR that you will use. I looked into this briefly and also couldn't find much info. But there is a lot of info in the docs you can use.