What is Air?
Where is the web going? That depends on who you ask. Adobe thinks the web is going on the desktop and they are going to achieve this with a product called Air.
What is Air? Air is short for Adobe Integrated Runtime. It is a cross-OS runtime that runs rich internet applications on the desktop. It allows current developers to leverage their existing knowledge and bind it to the desktop. Air applications are based on current web technologies like HTML, AJAX, Flash and Flex. In other words, developers can extend their current or future web applications on the desktop. The application will work on any OS, (and soon mobiles) give access to the file system and native applications and even include a local database for storing offline data that will sync to servers when back online.
This week in Chicago Adobe was holding their MAX conference where they launched various new technologies. This included the Air Beta 2 runtime which can be downloaded here. The new BETA version brings us closer to an official release which is planned for early next year. Last week I spent the day at the Adobe Air Bus Tour hosted at the Guvernment in Toronto. Not to mention the array of great food, they demoed many cool Air applications. I was impressed at the diversity of applications and technologies used for these Air applications. HTML applications were as impressive as big AJAX or Flex ones. There were several speakers there including Salesforce.com to demo an Air application and tell developers about their Flex toolkit for Apex. Yahoo Developer Network was also there to demo some applications and talk about ASTRA. It is hard to ignore Air with so many companies getting involved and at a fast rate. Here are a few further examples of Air applications: EBay Desktop , Adobe Media Player, Agile Agenda, DigiMix and more at the Air showcase.
It isn’t the first time that bringing the web to the desktop is attempted. It is interesting to see where this will all lead us. In the meantime here is what you need to start deploying your Air applications:
Air Beta 2 runtime
Air SDK (Command Line Compiler, docs, samples etc…)
AIR Extension for Dreamweaver (Build AIR apps from Dreamweaver CS3)
AIR Update for Flash CS3 (Build AIR apps from Flash CS3)
Aptana (Integrated development environment for building Air applications)