Adobe Air - deserving of the hype?

Question

There is a lot of interest and hype on Adobe Air lately. Is it deserving of this and are there any worthy competitors to Adobe in this space? The only Adobe Air application I have used is TweetDeck .. while I am not loving it, that may be a more a UI design/usability issue.

Answer 1

Similarly in the Microsoft World, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is getting a lot of hype and is starting to filter into real world projects more and more.

As far as whether the hype around 'Air' is justified, I think you would have to take a look at it yourself and make your own judgement.

Answer 2

I do not feel it deserves the hype. I guess I'm a bit biased, I don't really care for Adobe products (I feel they are bloated, slow and just plain ugly). But that's just me - to each their own :-)

Silverlight is a big competitor, in my mind, and I much prefer that (even though it has a few bugs that I think Microsoft should never have let ship in 2.0).

Answer 3

I actually don't think so... I believe that currently may users simply are confused how it works and what's it good for. But that might change. More and more developers will write apps for AIR and the users might accept it.

I love to see that there is a competitor for Silverlight out there, because as always: Competition is good for business.

Some useful informations: http://www.webglossary.co.uk/article-what-is-adobe-air.asp

Answer 4

I too have not been impressed with most of the Air applications I've used. Balsamiq Mockups is a notable exception. Using it is such a good experience that I am taking a second look at Air in general.

Answer 5

As a programmer who has developed desktop applications using many of the standard technologies (Win32, MFC, Java, .NET, etc) and who has developed web applications using the "AJAX" technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.), I cannot imagine why on earth anyone would want to torture themselves by using web technologies to build desktop applications. The web technology stack evolved within an unusually constrained environment with a specific set of goals (for instance, the web browser, portability, thin-client, no installation, etc.). It's an incomprehensible mess lacking comprehensive forethought or design. It's not even "easy" for non-engineers. So --- WHY Air?

Answer 6

I've been programming with Flex, and it feels a bit like Java to me... you can run anywhere, and do fairly serious work, as long as you don't mind running on a virtual machine that doesn't tightly integrate with the native capabilities of your platform.

It does do a fantastic job of making the developer's tools somewhat familiar to those who do web work... using CSS to control the look of your app; only this CSS really does what you tell it to without having to deal with browser issues (IE6, I'm looking at you.)

You can integrate with Flash assets in a beautiful way, and programmatically do just about anything that you see a flash widget do... transitions, special effects, etc are all at your disposal.

You can use layouts of containers to arrange your widgets, and avoid that feeling where the flash is using all the smallest fonts that it can possibly use just so that it can not have to scroll (or for whatever reason flash people like small fonts.)

Most of the developers that I know who have used Flex / Air think it's really fantastic. I think Actionscript3 still has a long way to go to provide a foundation of essentials like containers that rival Python's. Or the ability to integrate with your local OS & device drivers...

But what really works is that Adobe has a terrific penetration into the browser, and Flex is a great way for programmers to write Flash applications, and it's a huge plus that those applications can also run on the desktop. Because Adobe is covering all the bases adequately, they'll continue to be a good decision for software development. (As long as you don't have to integrate tightly with the OS, or run on an iPod Touch, etc.)

Answer 7

One code base, many platforms.

Flex/Air is delivering on what Java promised to be 10-15 years ago..

With Java many companies made their own Java Runtime and things became incompatible from platform to platform. Microsoft has replied with their WPF/Silverlight, it is capable, but in a lot of ways it doesn't have the 10+ years of rich media history that Flash does.

What is remarkable about Air / Flex is that it truly provides the same experience on multiple platforms in a way very little has. The penetration of the Flash Player is as ubiquitous as the web browser. No need to install a 40 mb .net runtime, or a java download, or approve this or that. It just works. The recent open sourcing of flex/flash standards has been inviting as well.

I think Air could prove to be a breakthrough technology. Adobe can quietly and capably provide a complete desktop experience (ala www.buzzword.com) in the browser without the AJAX battle that google docs had to go through.