Emulator gray under Test Target - why?

[WarrenW]

Hi everyone,

I have downloaded the trial 5.5.2 Windows version and read the trial will still allow you to test. I have installed the Android SDK 2.2. I have to launch the emulator for it to show in the Test Target menu which it does but it is grayed out. Below are a couple images for reference. Thanks! Warren

Well, I did have pictures but it seems my account does not let me post web pages which had the images for the Img tag on here. Does anyone know how I can post pictures or who to ask to do this?

Thanks!

[jacque]

In addition to the preferences setup, you need to set up the Android pane for your stack in standalone settings. Is that enabled?

[WarrenW]

Thanks! I read somewhere about the standalone settings. Where do I access that settings screen? It may be right in front of me!

Warren

[jacque]

In the File menu. Go to the Android pane and checkmark it to turn it on, then fill out the other settings.

[WarrenW]

Okay, I got it enabled. Then it built the app but the emulator screen came up black. It just did the Hello World app. So I read someone changed it to Android 2.3 and it worked fine. So I am installing version 2.3 right now and will try it. I'm just trying to see this work.

Thanks!

Warren

[jacque]

RIght, 2.2 has a problem if any of the sensors are enabled in your virtual device. The team helped me solve that at the last conference. If you turn off all the sensors (accelerometer, stuff like that) in the 2.2 emulator it works. But mostly I just test in 2.3 or higher where it isn't a problem.

[WarrenW]

I installed Android 2.3 and it is now working. So I'm trying new things out. Wow, the emulator takes forever to load it seems! But so far so good.

Warren

[WarrenW]

And the controls are so ugly compared to the development screen.

[FourthWorld]

Yeah, I spent a lot of time getting several emulators running, and all of them suck big time. Completely unusable for practical work.

Far simpler to just blow off emulation altogether and just drop your stacks into the device via Dropbox or whatever (I FTP them to one of my web sites).

[WarrenW]

Thanks. I haven't gotten that far yet. I just downloaded the trial today and ran my first little Hello World demo to see it work. I'll look into using my Samsung Galaxy S2 to test it all on.

What i am wondering is say it displays fine on my phone. I would like to see how it will run on another phone with different resolution. Does it resize for other phones? Or goes it look either small or going off the screen? I hope someone says that it will auto-size for other phones.

Thanks,

Warren

[jacque]

There is no automatic resizing, you have to script it. Basically you get the screenrect or the working screenrect (which gives you the pixel dimensions of the screen) and then repeat through all your controls and set each rect to a new size based on a ratio for that object. For example, if a field takes up a third of the screen in my base layout, then its ratio is 0.33.

It's tedious but do-able. The resizing should take place in a resizeStack handler, which the engine will trigger on launch on mobile devices.

[WarrenW]

Thanks for the info on resizing. It would have been side if this was addressed in the app itself where you have a target size you develop for and then can click a preview size to see what it will look like with the app being resized automatically. That's how I have seen it in another mobile development app.

I'll play with this and see how it goes.

Thanks

Warren

[WarrenW]

FourthWorld, can you tell me how to test an app on my phone itself? I tried searching and cannot find it. I have an Android Samsung Galaxy S2.

Thanks,

Warren

Yeah, I spent a lot of time getting several emulators running, and all of them suck big time. Completely unusable for practical work.

Far simpler to just blow off emulation altogether and just drop your stacks into the device via Dropbox or whatever (I FTP them to one of my web sites).