Debugging AIR for TV applications

You can debug your AIR application in several ways. The simplest way to uncover application logic issues is to debug on your development computer using ADL.

Device simulation using ADL

The fastest, easiest way to test and debug most application features is to run your application on your development computer using the Adobe Debug Launcher (ADL) utility. ADL uses the supportedProfiles element in the application descriptor to choose which profile to use. If more than one profile is listed, ADL uses the first one in the list. You can also use the -profile parameter of ADL to select one of the other profiles in the supportedProfiles list. (If you do not include a supportedProfiles element in the application descriptor, then any profile can be specified for the -profile argument.) For example, use the following command to launch an application to simulate the tv profile:

adl -profile tv myApp-app.xml

When simulating the tv or extendedTV profile on the desktop with ADL, the application runs in an environment that more closely matches a target device. For example:

  • ActionScript APIs that are not part of the profile in the -profile argument are not available.

  • ADL allows the input of device input controls through menu commands.

  • Specifying tv or extendedTV in the -profile argument allows ADL to simulate the StageVideo class on the desktop.

However, because ADL runs the application on the desktop, testing AIR for TV applications using ADL has limitations:

  • It does not reflect application performance on the device. Run performance tests on the target device.

  • It does not simulate the limitations of the StageVideo object. Typically, you use the StageVideo class, not the Video class, to play a video when targeting AIR for TV devices. The StageVideo class takes advantage of performance benefits of the device’s hardware, but has display limitations. ADL plays the video on the desktop without these limitations. Therefore, test playing video on the target device.

  • It cannot simulate the native code of an ActionScript extension. You can specify the extendedTV profile, which supports ActionScript extensions, in the ADL -profile argument. Although some ActionScript extensions contain only ActionScript code, typically they also contain native code. ADL cannot correctly run an application that uses an extension that contains both ActionScript code and native code.

Extension directory

The -extdir parameter allows you to specify the location of the extension code. Use this parameter only with the extendedTV profile. The extension code must be unpackaged. ANE files cannot be used with ADL. Furthermore, the extension cannot include any native code. Use an extension with ADL only if the extension has a stub ActionScript implementation or a simulator ActionScript implementation. For more information, see Developing ActionScript Extensions for Adobe AIR.

Control input

ADL simulates the remote control buttons on a TV device. You can send these button inputs to the simulated device using the menu displayed when ADL is launched using one of the TV profiles.

Screen size

You can test your application on different size screens by setting the ADL -screensize parameter. You can specify a string containing the four values representing the widths and heights of the normal and maximized screens. For example:

adl -screensize 1024x728:1024x768 myApp-app.xml

Trace statements

When you run your TV application on the desktop, trace output is printed to either the debugger or the terminal window used to launch ADL.

In all cases, the SWF files in the application must be compiled with debugging enabled in order for the runtime to output any trace statements.