What is Adobe Air?

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+1 Q:

What is Adobe Air?

What exactly is Adobe Air? I've seen a lot of people talking about it and I've even seen applications for it but I'm still not entirely sure what makes it unique or how it is different from other languages. Can someone please give me the concise version from a programmer's point of view?

Edit: I wasn't familiar with Flex so I found this nice explanation: http://www.onflex.org/ted/2008/01/what-is-flex.php

+8 A:

In a nutshell.

Start with the assumption that you know what Flex and Actionscript are. Then take the fact that they both run exclusively in your browser and to all intents and purposes are for building web apps.

Now assume you want to develop the same app, with the same language and user interface resources, but run it as a desktop app on a workstion (PC, Mac, or Linux interchangeably).

AIR is what you add (as a link library) to Flex and Actionscript to accomplish that.

le dorfier 2009-01-24 06:12:59

Additionally the AIR runtime includes the Webkit HMTL rendering engine (Webkit is also used by Apple Safari and Google Chrome browsers), and can interpret JavaScript. (In contrast, Flex ActionScript3 must be compiled into .swf files before can be executed in the Flash or AIR runtimes.)

RogerV 2009-01-24 07:17:54

Also important to note that AIR applications can be built with HTML and Javascript... although I've only ever built them with Flex and ActionScript.

cliff.meyers 2009-01-24 21:52:11

Alas, one of the deficiencies of AIR is inability to launch other processes. Java, in contrast, has Runtime.exec() and Process class for doing that. This is the most frequently cited lack of feature for Adobe to address regarding AIR.

RogerV 2009-01-25 17:43:04

@RogerV - agreed - I've had to deal with the no-exec() issue too.

le dorfier 2009-01-26 02:32:45

It's basically flex for the desktop afaik

klyde 2009-01-24 06:13:16

+1 A:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Integrated_Runtime Write cross-platform desktop apps in Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax.

2009-01-24 07:46:09

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