is there doc for the exact steps to publish to iOS?

that would be extremely useful! Come on Adobe. SUPPORT US!

Hi,

I created the files on Windows. Then took them to my Mac, where saved as IOS projector (if that is the term.) then uploaded to itunes. had a bit of trouble but then was able to use it on the ipad.

Worked.

Hello webdesignsf,

I’m in the same situation as you – I’m just about to finish my first iPad app, and will be submitting it to the Apple iStore very soon.

( Can someone please verify this procedure below )

As soon as I figure it all out, I’ll write down the steps.

regard Milky.

In the meantime, I’m guessing…..

Get a distribution certificate & make a distribution provisioning profile

Create icons and screen shots

(??? maybe  -   Setup for embedded icons – edit the info.plist to reference a unique icons - see the bottom of this message for more info ???)

Make your .ipa file with Director 12 (using the above distribution certificate – provisioning profile)

Change the extension of your .ipa file – from .ipa into a .zip   (you just rename the file!)

Unzip this .zip file –  (this will create a folder called ‘Payload’)

Find the ‘Payload’ folder – inside you’ll now see a .APP file!

Highlight this .APP file – and with the right mouse button - select ‘Compress’

(This will convert the .APP file into a .zip file – this is what Apple calls a binary file)

Navigate to the iTunes Connect area of the iOS Dev Centre

Download and install the ‘Application Loader’ utility from the iOS Dev Center  -  (I think is's now a part of xCode too!)

Go to the Manage Your Apps page and click 'Add New App'

Fill out the forms describing your company and application

When asked upload the icons and screenshots

Save the app description

Back on the Manage Your Apps page, select the app description you just created, and click the Ready to Upload Binary button

Fill out the Export compliance form

Your app should now be in a ‘Waiting for upload’ state in the manage your apps page

Now use the Application Loader utility to upload your binary file.

Other Notes:-

There is a whole list of recommendations for getting apps approved by Apple - I'll write these down one day.

make sure your app is as small as you can get it, and make sure it’s fast to load up the first screen (3 seconds or less)

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/app_store_guide.html

Guide for Apple App Store submissions | Adobe Developer Connection

There are loads of youTube videos that show submissions to the app store with other development systems,

but they are mostly the same, when it comes to setting up the distribution certificate etc...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4iPyGyrhcM

Uploading your GameSalad game to Apple - YouTube

Setup for embedded icons:-

Submitting icons and screenshots is a part of the app submission process.

But you may need to create a Director made ‘ipa’ file, with unique icons already embedded first ???  I just don't know yet???

(pallottadesign) wrote some instructions regarding this way back in May 2013 – I don’t know if this step is needed anymore – but I added it here in case....

Re: director 12 IOS publishing icon plist

• pallottadesign May 1, 2013 6:17 AM (in response to ralph2511)
• Editing a separate info.plist to reference your app icons is actually a better approach than altering the defaults within Otto.app.
• The procedure is simple:
• Put your unique app icons in the same folder as your Director file. You can name these icons whatever you wish, or name them the same as the defaults in Otto.app, i.e. "projector_72x72.png" and "projector_57x57.png", or you can give them unique names.
• Copy the info.plist file to the same folder as your Director file.
• If you have given your icons unique names, open the info.plist file in Xcode and find the "Icon files" key. Edit "Item 0" and change the entry to the name of the 72x72 pixel png icon. Edit "Item 1" and change the entry to the name of the 57x57 pixel png icon.
• Save the info.plist file.
• Within Director, open Publish Settings and in the "Files" tab, enable "Copy linked and dependent files." Click on "Add Dependent Files" and navigate to the folder with your unique icons. Select each one and make sure that the radio button is checked for each one.
• In the iOS tab, select the "Info Plist Path" option and navigate to the location of your edited info.plist. Select the info.plist file in the dialog box and click "Choose."
• Publish your iOS app and test. The icons should now have been embedded within your iOS app bundle.
• You may be able to put the icons in an "images" folder within your app folder structure, but you will still have to use the "Copy linked and dependent files" and "Add Dependent Files" options to have that folder and the icons bundled within your iOS app.
• If you intend to develop apps for the app store, you may need additional icons at larger sizes.
• For reference: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/FileSystem ProgrammingGUide/FileSystemOverview/FileSystemOverview.html
• and for icons:
• http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/ IconsImages/IconsImages.html

As a pre-assumption here it actually looks like they are asking how to get the app to run on the iOS device, not how to publish to the iOS app store.  Because, you know, the Director menu calls the action to build an .IPA 'Publish'.

No I just uploaded the whole .IPA, that stuff about extracting stuff out of the IPA and re-compressing it is just non-sense.  Maybe it works but you don't need to do it.  Replacing the icons within OTTO is actually easier than all of those extra steps (and the extra steps didn't work for me).

The default icons are inside of OTTO.  Backup OTTO and replace the icons already embedded inside of OTTO with your custom icons.  Then when you build the .IPA it will have your custom icons embedded inside of it.

You should understand that OTTO is what gets loaded first, it is a wrapper for the entire application.

Come on guys we already have working Director 12 iPad apps in the iOS app store, we haven't shared successful publishing steps yet?  Yeah that would be great.  Our team started shipping first iPad app end of March, about to submit our team's second iPad app next week (it is already done), I can record the steps and post them.

You don't need Xcode to create the .IPA, you don't need Xcode to copy the .IPA to your device.  You need to create a signing certificate that matches your machine, then create provisioning profile based on both the signing certificate and your device's UUID.  You build the .IPA in Director on the machine used to create the signing certificate, with the provisioning profile.  And the iOS App Bundle Identifiers MUST match between the provisioning profile and the string you set in Director=>'Publish Settings'=>'iOS'.  You copy the .IPA signed with that signing certificate and provisioning profile straight to your iPad, just drag it into iTunes you don't need to use Xcode.

CodeJingle  - Thank you

Your assistance and knowledge, on how to publish to the iOS app store (and with the setting up of icons) has really helped me.

Thanks for being one of the most help full contributors to the Director forums of late.

I’m hopefully only a few days away from posting my first Director made app to the iOS app store.

I have spent the last month just trying to get my program to work on the iPad without memory leaks.

Although my software works perfectly well when published to Windows, Mac and Shockwave…

when published as an ipa file, it only works for about 4 minutes until it suddenly quits – memory leak?

After lots of stupid changes, I’ve now got it to hold out for 10 minutes before it quits - I’ll soon have it locked down & ready to go.

Many thanks

Milky

Great I am glad I could help.  I barely get this stuff too, I just close my eyes and smash all the buttons and sometimes it works.

I haven't heard often of memory leaks in a Director projector.  If it quits unexpectedly on the iPad, in practice for me that usually means the code is one-off.  Like one index off on an array, or calling a function that doesn't exist, or passing the wrong number of parameters to a function, or calling an asynchronous function that was thought to be synchronous.  If you are using an Xtra on the Windows / Mac / Web that isn't on iOS, you have to remove the Xtra and all calls to it etc.  (Occam's razor).  Also Director iOS projector is very picky.

You get iPad crash logs in Xcode organizer, have you tried to make any sense of them?

Best bet for next time is to start from day one testing on iPad.  As soon as you have a 1st prototype start testing on the iPad and every change after that worth testing on Mac / Win / Shockwave should also be tested on iPad.  And if your target platform is iPad-only or 'iTunes Exclusive' then it may make sense to test exclusively on iPad and forgo 'rapid prototyping' on Mac / Win / Shockwave.

I think for you some of this stuff may be common sense so I don't want to make it sound like you haven't already thought of these things, still it is good to spell them out for the 2nd or 3rd time.  It can take me many tries to get something right when it comes to software development.

Another thing which is really confusing so pay attention - in 'OTTO/Info.plist' the file names for the icons are 'projector_57x57.png' and 'projector_72x72.png'.

! Replace the file 'OTTO/projector_57x57.png' with an icon that is 72x72 !

! Replace the file 'OTTO/projector_72x72.png' with an icon that is 76x76 !

I know it doesn't make any sense but this is what works the best, and I'll explain it now.  Apple actually wants 3 icons that are 72x72, 76x76, and 152x152.  The 72x72 icon isn't used but is required by Apple anyway.  The 76x76 icon is what is displayed on a non-retina iPad.  The 152x152 icon is what is displayed on a retina iPad.  'OTTO' package contents can be altered but 'OTTO/Info.plist' cannot be altered, so you can only embed 2 out of 3.  The 152x152 icon is optional, it just makes for a better looking icon on retina iPad, otherwise in its absence retina iPad will display the 76x76 icon.  The 76x76 icon is essential because it works on both non-retina iPad and retina iPad, the 152x152 icon will not display on a non-retina iPad.  So we don't include the 152x152 icon, we include the 72x72 icon and the 76x76 icon.  Hopefully in the near future Adobe releases an 'OTTO' with an 'OTTO/Info.plist' that has 3 icon sub-members, otherwise Apple may eventually only ask for 2 icon sizes and not an optional 3rd one.

Once you have replaced the two icon files inside of 'OTTO' you will need to create a custom 'plist' outside of 'OTTO' (a good place is in 'Projector iOS Resources') that contains all the correct information.  If you don't do this then the metadata of your application will say 'Copyright Adobe' etc and you don't want that.  Some of the members of the custom 'plist' are ignored so it won't matter what you change for those members (like for icons), so keep that in mind.  I included a link to the custom 'plist' for our team's most recent iOS iPad application that we submitted for review about an hour ago, built with Director 12 Hot Fix 4.  To reduce liability lets say you need a current iOS developer account to use the file (and probably a current Director 12 subscription membership or hard copy license), which should be everyone who would need it.  Any questions about any content of the custom 'plist' ask in a reply to this post.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58808849/InfoIPADONLY.plist

When you submit your app for final review you should only get 1 or 2 warnings, one for the missing 152x152 icon, another possible warning if the API usage list is too long for the verification tool to process.

To webbdesignsf - You can only build an '.IPA' from a '.DIR' using Director (latest version as of June 30, 2014 is Director 12 Hot Fix 4).  And not because no one uses Director (though that is mostly true it isn't part of this context).  xCode is free and provided by Apple, it doesn't support 3rd party proprietary programming languages like Lingo (xCode only supports non-proprietary programming languages such as C or C++ and Apple's own 1st party quasi-proprietary programming languages like Objective-C or Swift).  And '.DIR' is a Director-made proprietary file format.  So it isn't going to work.

Director is the only thing you can use to take a Director-made proprietary file format '.DIR' containing code written in Director's proprietary programming language Lingo and turn it into something that will run properly on an iOS device.  And besides Director being required to go from '.DIR' to '.IPA' (not xCode), it is rather difficult or impossible to do with the Windows version of Director, since Director's process to publish to iOS is designed to only work properly on OS X.  So you need an Apple computer running OS X with the OS X version of Director 12 Hot Fix 4 installed on it (please no Hackintosh), and a paid active iOS Developer Membership.  That is sort of the baseline.  Creating the signing request, the development and distribution certificates, and the development and distribution provisions, that comes later, and is all tied to a specific entity in charge of building and specific machines performing build and (for development provision only) specific iOS devices executing those builds.  Also you will only be using xCode after the '.IPA' is built.

iOS doesn't support Flash in webpages.  iOS doesn't support Director / Shockwave in webpages.  So there is no other way to run Flash apps or Director / Shockwave apps on iOS devices, other than to build them as '.IPA' using the official Adobe Flash and Adobe Director development applications on an Apple Mac running OS X, and after completing development then distribute them via the iOS App Store.