Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations

Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by ThomPete on Thursday January 29, 2009 @07:00AM (#456221)

pclark, well you will have a hard time finding a framework that is more fitted for online/offline services, that actually allows you to create a proper UX and design experience and that is so easy to get going with. No other crossbrowser frameworks work as well as this IMHO

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by pclark on Thursday January 29, 2009 @07:12AM (#456225)

for a bloody good reason -- it shouldn't be done.

The solution? Web Apps + Google Gears. Then it'll run on any OS, even iPhones -- and can be offline. You have the added ability of creating a "nice" UI that users will expect - if my mother was to open an Adobe Air, she'd be confused as hell. Its neither a web app, nor a native app.

Don't make web apps look like desktop apps

Always make desktop apps look like their native OS. If you can't do this, just make a freaking web app.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by codeview on Thursday January 29, 2009 @08:31AM (#456302)

Google gears , Mozilla Prism are all a different genre. If you are planning to build an "occasionally connected app" that lives within the browser, Gears is a good choice. AIR is for building desktop apps.

If you are a web developer and knows Javascript (and/or Flash), you can build great apps that works nicely on desktop with Adobe AIR. AIR doesn't force developers to build custom chrome for apps. By default AIR renders the app in OS's native chrome. But if a developer chooses to, he can go for custom chrome .Thats it.

AIR is a runtime (more like Java ) for running AIR apps. You needn't "open an Adobe Air" at any point. Just install the apps you really want and use it.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by dantheman on Thursday January 29, 2009 @07:35AM (#456254)

I'm going to have to disagree, an AIR application is no less a native application than a java program. There is no need for a network connection for it to run.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by axod on Thursday January 29, 2009 @09:03AM (#456331)

So what's the point of AIR? Why do we need it.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by ThomPete on Thursday January 29, 2009 @09:28AM (#456360)

For many different reasons a few of them being, that it's easy and yet powerful and let you create powerful professional apps with any degree of usability and UX you require.

It allows for you to blur the line between of and online in a much more smooth way.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by pclark on Thursday January 29, 2009 @10:45AM (#456477)

and we've seen what adobe things "smooth" is from when Fireworks/Photoshop "smoothens" text.

Not at all.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by ThomPete on Thursday January 29, 2009 @10:58AM (#456496)

don't know what they did to you but apparently you seem pissed at them for some reason. It's just software mate.

You are welcome to find alternatives and no google has nothing even close to this. No one really has when you look at it from a holistic point of view, which I would normally recommend.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by allenbrunson on Thursday January 29, 2009 @12:34PM (#456718)

i can't speak for pclark, but i can tell you why i'm against flash/air/etc: the web should be based on free and open standards. the fact that no single company controls the internet is what makes it great.

does anybody remember what things were like before the internet was widely available to everybody? personally, i used compuserve. they were able to charge hideous rates per minute, because they were a de facto monopoly.

allowing a company like adobe to control such a huge swath of the internet is a step backwards towards the compuserve days.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by pj on Thursday January 29, 2009 @12:29PM (#456711)

The holistic view is exactly why Adobe Air is bad.

It's not standard and it limits accessibility.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by ThomPete on Friday January 30, 2009 @03:22AM (#457876)

So does Firefox plugins, I don't see anyone leeching out against that. It's a weird puritan view.

Flash is as standard as you can get and air is just an extension off that allowing you to do more stuff off line.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by pj on Friday January 30, 2009 @12:08PM (#458314)

Flash is not as standard as you can get.

The web standards are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Flash is neither of those. The specification is not controlled by a governing body. It is controlled by one company.

Talking about Firefox plugins is straw man, has nothing to do with this conversation and I don't know any websites that require a Firefox plugin to work correctly. If they exist, I don't use them.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by ThomPete on Friday January 30, 2009 @09:49PM (#459153)

saying that flash is not a de facto standard is surely missing the big picture on this. Sorry but what would you call the standard for showing video if not flash? What would you call the standard for doing animation or another other sort of rich manipulation.

Just because it's not open does not mean that it's not a standard.

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Re:Adobe Air surpasses 100 Million installations by halo on Thursday January 29, 2009 @01:41PM (#456861)

And we all know that Java on the desktop has been such a great success..

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