🔒 Locked

Adobe Air

Started by boolean Jul 21, 2008 at 2:35 AM 17 replies 4.2k views

Original Post

Jul 21, 2008 at 2:35 AM

Adobe released the public version of AIR a few days ago, you can grab it for free here. I've been checking out a few apps with it, and it's pretty dang cool. For those who may not have heard of it, AIR is a cross platform SDK/runtime environment which allows developers to create web based applications that can be run without any actual browser written in HTML and &#106avascript(Ajax). So if you know how to make a website, you can build a cross platform desktop application with Air through something like Dreamweaver. Nifty! From Dreamweaver you can compile the distribution package or preview the application, and what's cool is the applications can also be run completely offline. For example a Air version of Gmail could run just like Outlook Express, whether you are online or not. One real life example is that you can use Ebay offline to manage your account with their air app, fill out an item to be sold, then when you next connect to the internet it will update it for you. What's also cool is that because it is running locally, it has access to your local computer too. For example <a href="http://xdrive.com/desktop-lite/">Xdrive</a> let's you drag and drop files directly into the Air app which are uploaded to your web file hosting. You can mark files to be synchronized so if it detects a change in the file, it automatically updates it on the file server. Anyone else had a look at it yet? I've not had a chance to play around with it as it's rather late, but I'm curious who has had some time with it. Do you think it's going to be as good as Adobe is expecting? Any horrible problems anyone has heard of? Disclaimer: If I messed up or skipped over any really important information, I literally only found out about Airs existence an hour ago, so yeah. And it’s like 4am.

davepermen

Jul 21, 2008 at 4:14 AM

i don't like it. i've done apps that behave the same with click-once since years, and now adobe air is the holy grail somehow.

and i don't like web-apps. it's just useless overhead to do html-rendering, &#106avascripting, flash, etc for what a simple win32 app could handle as well. it's espencially sad that 99% of the adobe air apps will never care about gui standards, so shortcuts don't work, or the right mouse button, or the cursor itself, or drag'n'drop, or sorting. www.beatportdownloader.com is one adobe air app i use. it's nice, much nicer than www.beatport.com itself, and makes downloading more easy. then again, a normal page with ajax interface would possibly scale better and behave better, and a real win32 shop app would be very cool, too. and i don't trust adobe in terms of security, ever.

d000hg

Jul 21, 2008 at 4:28 AM

Web-apps are the way it's going. You might as well accept that and make the best of it. I don't necessarily think they are always the best approach either, but users don't like the "do you want to install X" dialog.

Personally, I love the idea of Air (I don't know about in practice) but I'm thinking more from a gameDev perspective here... you can write Flash/Flex games which will look slicker and don't have to run in browser window.

Lode

Jul 21, 2008 at 5:02 AM

Wow, the subject of the thread made it look like Adobe had started up an airline, "Adobe Air" :D

Kambiz

Jul 21, 2008 at 6:15 AM

While it seems to be a nice framework there are several things I don't like about it:
1) AIR must be installed on the target computer.
2) Any AIR application needs to be installed. You cant simply run an Application with a double click. (correct me if I'm wrong)
3) The GUI doest match the look and feel of the platform. This is OK for games but for other Applications I prefer a standard GUI.
4) It is not cross platform (yet?):

Even the alpha version for Linux doesn't work on Ubuntu 64bit.

kanzler

Jul 21, 2008 at 6:18 AM

Quote:
Original post by davepermen
and i don't trust adobe in terms of security, ever.

WHS. If AIR ever takes off I fear for even more security issues caused by Adobe software.

d000hg

Jul 21, 2008 at 6:58 AM

Quote:

1) AIR must be installed on the target computer.

Just like Flash/Silverlight/Java - how the hell else would it work? Magic?

Quote:

3) The GUI doest match the look and feel of the platform. This is OK for games but for other Applications I prefer a standard GUI.

Flex supports themes so I imagine AIR will too.

Quote:

4) It is not cross platform (yet?)

It will be.

ukdeveloper

Jul 21, 2008 at 7:04 AM

Wow, more slow, browser crashing, irritating poop [rolleyes]

What's wrong with a desktop app? All these web development acronyms make me a very sad panda, TBH. You're hopelessly behind the times if you're not mixing ASP.Net 4.0 with OMGWTFHTML 2.6 W3C Transitional and Flash CS6 with ActionScript 5.0... &#106avascript is soooo 1999, ya know? Call me old school, but I really can't be bothered trying to keep up. I hate web development because no matter how many standards people lay down, the browser vendors laugh in the face of them and you have to resort to ugly comptibility hacks far too often. There is no browser with 100% compliance, not even your beloved Firefox 3. I'd rather port a desktop app to run on Linux rather than beat LOLBBQXHTML 2.1 Extended with a stick to run under the Mac OSX build of Camino so that it doesn't look like a road accident, thank you very much. I know AIR is trying to solve these problems, but will it? What's wrong with Flash? People make games with that and it (usually) works great, is AIR really necessary at all? So this thing looks like more insecure Adobe shovelware which isn't consistent with anything and causes more problems than it solves. Sure, it'll eventually become fully cross platform but it'll probably suck balls under one platform and work excellently under another, I seriously doubt there being any consistency there.

Kambiz

Jul 21, 2008 at 7:15 AM

Quote:
Quote:
1) AIR must be installed on the target computer.
Just like Flash/Silverlight/Java - how the hell else would it work? Magic?

It should let me put everything needed in my applications directory so that I can make portable apps. Many AIR applications are small utilities, why should someone need administrative privileges to install AIR just to run a mini application.

Quote:
Quote:
3) The GUI doest match the look and feel of the platform. This is OK for games but for other Applications I prefer a standard GUI.
Flex supports themes so I imagine AIR will too.

Yes, but the default theme is the same on all platforms and themes for different platforms aren't available. Qt for example provides you styles like QWindowsXPstyle, QMacstyle and so on. Thats the look but what about the feel? Right click behavior, keyboard shortcuts and so on?

Quote:
Quote:
4) It is not cross platform (yet?)
It will be.

But when? Adobe hasn't even released a 64 bit flash plugin for Linux.

asp_

Jul 21, 2008 at 7:34 AM

Quote:

Adobe hasn't even released a 64 bit flash plugin for Linux.

I don't think they have a 64 bit version period. It's probably the biggest reason you get two Internet Explorer installations with Vista 64, one 64 bit and one 32 bit with the 32 bit being default.

d000hg

Jul 21, 2008 at 7:42 AM

Quote:
Original post by Kambiz
Quote:
Quote:
1) AIR must be installed on the target computer.
Just like Flash/Silverlight/Java - how the hell else would it work? Magic?

It should let me put everything needed in my applications directory so that I can make portable apps. Many AIR applications are small utilities, why should someone need administrative privileges to install AIR just to run a mini application.

Probably because AIR apps get permission to work with files etc? AIR might be used for little utilities but it's designed to do more, especially the offline part. Working offline without any file access is pretty lame, and file access is the kind of thing that should be blocked from users you can't trust to know what they're doing.

d000hg

Jul 21, 2008 at 7:44 AM

Quote:
Original post by asp_
Quote:

Adobe hasn't even released a 64 bit flash plugin for Linux.

I don't think they have a 64 bit version period. It's probably the biggest reason you get two Internet Explorer installations with Vista 64, one 64 bit and one 32 bit with the 32 bit being default.

MS has a competing product in Silverlight, so going to a lot of effort to help AIR seems strange.

Kambiz

Jul 21, 2008 at 8:07 AM

Quote:
Original post by d000hg
Quote:
Original post by Kambiz
Quote:
Quote:
1) AIR must be installed on the target computer.
Just like Flash/Silverlight/Java - how the hell else would it work? Magic?

It should let me put everything needed in my applications directory so that I can make portable apps. Many AIR applications are small utilities, why should someone need administrative privileges to install AIR just to run a mini application.
Probably because AIR apps get permission to work with files etc? AIR might be used for little utilities but it's designed to do more, especially the offline part. Working offline without any file access is pretty lame, and file access is the kind of thing that should be blocked from users you can't trust to know what they're doing.

Other applications (C/C++, Java, Python,...) can access files too. The OS should prevent access to files owned by root or others but why shouldn't an application access files owned by the user.

One of the biggest problems I have with windows is keeping it clean. After installing and uninstalling a lot of applications, Windows keeps getting slower and slower. Many applications don't delete all files when you uninstall them. I prefer applications you can run with a double click and uninstall simply by removing them. Being able to have the application on a usb stick and run everywhere is a plus too.

[Edited by - Kambiz on July 21, 2008 8:07:19 AM]

Anon Mike

Jul 21, 2008 at 9:11 AM

Quote:
Original post by d000hg
Quote:
Original post by asp_
Quote:

Adobe hasn't even released a 64 bit flash plugin for Linux.

I don't think they have a 64 bit version period. It's probably the biggest reason you get two Internet Explorer installations with Vista 64, one 64 bit and one 32 bit with the 32 bit being default.
MS has a competing product in Silverlight, so going to a lot of effort to help AIR seems strange.

How exactly does Adobe not bothering to create a 64-bit flash plugin equate to Microsoft not "going to a lot of effort to help AIR"? Actually the fact that 32-bit IE is the default on 64-bit Windows demonstrates that they actually *do* go to some effort to help third-parties.

With the standard method of competing with MS today being more in the courts than in the marketplace I'd think anything that could be constituted as even vaguelly failing to assist third-parties would get them sued (again) for anti-trust.

d000hg

Jul 21, 2008 at 10:23 AM

Quote:
I don't think they [Adobe] have a 64 bit version period. It's probably the biggest reason you get two Internet Explorer installations with Vista 64, one 64 bit and one 32 bit with the 32 bit being default.

I thought it was being suggested MS made a 32-bit version of IE to help Adobe?

capn_midnight

Jul 21, 2008 at 1:33 PM

Quote:
Original post by d000hg
Web-apps are the way it's going. You might as well accept that and make the best of it. I don't necessarily think they are always the best approach either, but users don't like the "do you want to install X" dialog.

I call shenanigans. I've heard people say this for the last 15 years of my life. I'm still waiting. If anything, I think this indicates that the web application will die in favor of better distribution models for desktop applications. That's really what this is. The apps run locally, you download them locally, etc., but you're crippled with dealing with web rendering idioms to present content to your user.

davepermen

Jul 21, 2008 at 1:38 PM

Quote:
Original post by Kambiz
Other applications (C/C++, Java, Python,...) can access files too. The OS should prevent access to files owned by root or others but why shouldn't an application access files owned by the user.

web application have the tendency to recommunicate the user info into the web. how do you like the idea that your funny advert on some website (which is a flash-thingy => the same that would run in air) has access to all your user files, and is able to spy out all your private data.. including scanning for wireless key.txt, and banklogon.txt)..

web apps should be very very restricted and sandboxed. clickonce takes care of that, and doesn't require anything to start, you just click a link and be done..

so what, again, does air give me? except having to trust into adobe, a company who made it possible to hack vista (famous contest, hacking a macbook, a vista notebook and a linux notebook). they got into vista trough flash afair.

with going microsoft only, or oss only, or mac only, you can at least trust your single source. wether it's a good source is another thing :)

after i wanted to install adobe reader (which now installs air by default, and "Adobe.com" a funky super-application nobody needs) on the asus eee, realizing it took me 200mb of space for a ****ing pdf viewer, i instantly removed it and now use SumatraPDF, 1.2mb or so, doing the same :)

we use adobe workflow at our company, and it just shows, they are no better in the business world.

i want standards-conforming, usable guis, and not web2 buzz.

and i know "web is the way to go". doens't mean i have to accept it like a blind sheep

Oxyd

Jul 21, 2008 at 2:12 PM

When are they finally going to release something to replace the Web? As in, the (X)HTML file format, the HTTP(S) transfer protocol and all related stuff?

Seriously, all this technology is being bent so much, not even a sadist could possibly like it. It was created to transfer and present slightly formatted text with small amount of images. Why are they trying to bastardize it with yet another ugly kludge to make it do something that it never was supposed to do at all?

If I (the user) can download additional software for my browser, I can as well download a completely different browser-like app. Just make it use some sane protocols (base-64 for transferring binary data? No, not anymore, thanks), make it with interactivity and multimedia in mind from the beggining and I'll be much, much happier.

d000hg

Jul 21, 2008 at 6:27 PM

Quote:
Original post by Oxyd
When are they finally going to release something to replace the Web? As in, the (X)HTML file format, the HTTP(S) transfer protocol and all related stuff?

Isn't that what Flex/SL/AIR do? Forget an HTML page with SWFs embedded, if your entire app is written in Flex you can communicate with the server using raw sockets if you really want... and the server can even be some hardcore C++ app if you insist.

Or more realistically, you can use HTTP (& ASP.net or similar) but send custom XML/JSON data to you Flex app and avoid HTML/CSS. To me, those are the broken technologies...

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.