BANGALORE, INDIA: With Web 2.0 being the buzzword amongst the development community, developers are continuously churning out innovative and more interactive applications for the web as well as the desktop.
Browser plug-ins such as Flash and the recently launched MS Silverlight, have given a platform to web developers for rendering interactive applications over the Web. We have Java or .NET for delivering applications for desktops but none of these could be used by developers whose skills are restricted to just HTML, JavaScript or Flash.
In March '07, Adobe introduced a technology called AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) that could be used by web developers to create Rich Internet Applications (RIA) for the desktop. It is a collection of application resources installed on the computer system that is used to execute other applications. As AIR is a cross platform runtime, application developers do not have to worry about platform specific programming. The runtime provides a consistent cross-operating system platform and framework for deploying applications, eliminating cross-OS testing.
Instead of developing applications catering to a specific operating system, the developer concentrates on his application programming only. The installed runtime itself has a common application data because of which the developed applications are lightweight and smaller in size. Adobe AIR, which currently is in public beta version 2, was formerly code-named Apollo.
Once this AIR runtime is installed, it provides support for building both HTML and Flash based applications. Adobe AIR presently supports Windows and Mac, but later this year a version for Linux is also expected to be released. With Adobe AIR web developers can extend their Flash, Flex, HTML, and Ajax-based applications to the desktop, without having to learn traditional desktop development technologies like Java or .NET.
Apps for AIR
For launching the application in AIR, a descriptor file is needed, which is an XML file that contains specifications and the file information that AIR has to read and load onto the AIR container. The application that is developed is packaged and distributed as a single-file installer, known as an AIR file (.air). You'll need to install the AIR runtime environment on a system to run .air files on it.
