Automatic orientation

When auto-orientation is on and a user rotates their device, the operating system re-orients the entire user interface, including the system taskbar and your application. As a result, the aspect ratio of the stage changes from portrait to landscape or landscape to portrait. When the aspect ratio changes, the stage dimensions also change.

Enable or disable auto-orientation at runtime, by setting the Stage autoOrients property to true or false . You can set the initial value of this property in the AIR application descriptor with the <autoOrients> element. (Note that prior to AIR 2.6, autoOrients is a read-only property and can only be set in the application descriptor.)

If you specify an aspect ratio of landscape or portrait and also enable auto-orientation, AIR constrains auto-orientation to the specified aspect ratio.

Stage dimension changes

When the stage dimensions change, the stage contents are scaled and repositioned as specified by the scaleMode and align properties of the Stage object. In most cases, relying on the automatic behavior provided by the Stage scaleMode settings does not produce good results. Instead you must re-layout or redraw your graphics and components to support more than one aspect ratio. (Providing flexible layout logic also means that your application will work better across devices with different screen sizes and aspect ratios.)

The following illustration demonstrates the effects of the different scaleMode settings when rotating a typical mobile device:

View full size graphic
Rotation from landscape to portrait aspect ratio

The illustration demonstrates the scaling behavior that occurs when rotating from a landscape aspect ratio to a portrait aspect ratio with different scale modes. Rotating from portrait to landscape causes a similar set of effects.

Orientation change events

The Stage object dispatches two types of events that you can use to detect and react to orientation changes. Both stage resize and orientationChange events are dispatched when auto-orientation is enabled.

The resize event is the best event to use when you are relying on auto-orientation to keep the display upright. When the stage dispatches a resize event, relayout or redraw your content, as needed. The resize event is only dispatched when the stage scale mode is set to noScale .

The orientationChange event can also be used to detect orientation changes. The orientationChange event is only dispatched when auto-orientation is enabled.

Note: On some mobile platforms, the stage dispatches a cancelable orientationChanging event before dispatching the resize or orientationChange events. Since the event is not supported on all platforms, avoid relying on it.

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