Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Playbook Dev error: barsigner error: Certificate chain not found for: RDK

While going through the instructions on creating a signed bar file for Playbook from an Adobe Flash Professional CS5 project on Windows 7 64 bit laptop, I got an error that stumped me for quite a while:
barsigner error: Certificate chain not found for: RDK.  RDK must reference a valid KeyStore key entry containing a private key and corresponding public key certificate chain
bar file in c:\rim\bin\VegasCasinoMaps.bar


The elusive solution for me was to register the RDK csj file with RIM. 

<Register with RIM>
blackberry-signer -register -csjpin <yourpasswordhere> -cskpass <yourotherpasswordhere> client-RDK-123456789.csj

Blackberry sends 2 emails with 2 different csj files and evidently I had been using the PBDT csj file and NOT the RDK csj file.  The next 2 steps worked great after getting the correct csj file registered with RIM

<DOUBLE SIGNING - FIRST STEP>
blackberry-signer -verbose -cskpass <yourpasswordhere> -keystore YOURFILE.p12 -storepass <yourpasswordhere> VegasCasinoMaps.bar RDK 
  lots of status feedback, bar signed.
 
< DOUBLE SIGNING - SECOND STEP >
blackberry-signer -keystore YOURFILE.p12 -storepass <yourpasswordhere> VegasCasinoMaps.bar author

If you would like to know more about my apps, please check out www.SmartLittleKid.com

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Vegas Casino Maps

#LasVegas Have you ever found yourself in a casino and can't find the exit? I don't normally go to the strip unless I'm meeting somebody from out of town.  If you're like me, I don't know where every casino is on the strip and I don't want to drive down Las Vegas Boulevard more than I have to.  So knowing which exit to take off the freeway is pretty important and knowing where to go inside the casino is even more important when I'm in a hurry.  So the inspiration for Vegas Casino Maps for your iPhone or Android came from a personal need.

If you would like to know more about my apps, please check out www.SmartLittleKid.com

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Mobile App Development

With a couple mobile apps under my belt on the iPhone, I decided to take the plunge and start porting my primary app to the Android platform.  I probably struggled more with getting the Android SDK environment set up than actually getting the application launched, probably because the setup took me several days to complete and inevitably I would start working on something else while waiting, then lose track of exactly what step I was on. XCode did not come easy for me so I wasn't looking forward to another native SDK for the Android.  I happened to run across a book called Professional Flash Mobile Development which uses Flash Professional CS5 as the development environment with the ability to compile the project for iOS or Android.  That's a huge plus to learn a single platform that can compile the app to different mobile devices.  I gave it a try and with the help of this video tutorial about ActionScript 3 programming, I was up and running in a weekend and a working prototype assembled within the week and an app in the Android market in 3 weeks.  By comparison, my first iPhone app took months to complete.  I attribute the difference to better learning tools (like the videos) and a huge group of Adobe Flash users that had already posted answers to just about every question I would have along the way.  My app has uses about 45 Adobe Illustrator files and the majority of my time was spent trying to figure out how to get the Illustrator files to work inside Flash.  There are several different options, like saving to a bitmap, importing the AI file into the library/stage, using a load class to load dynamically.  Each of these options worked okay, but the best solution I found was much more subtle.  To preserve the vector artwork, importing into the library worked great until I had imported about 20 files, then I started getting really weird errors "5005: Unknown Error optimizing byte code" in my AS3 code that didn't make any sense because I wasn't updating any AS3 code, I was just importing AI files.  After reading through several dozen posts and solutions that didn't work for me, I found out that Adobe Illustrator can export files to SWF, while still preserving the vector based artwork, plus the code worked exactly the same as importing the AI file, not to mention the exported files were much smaller.

If you would like to know more about my apps, please check out www.SmartLittleKid.com