Does Adobe Air deserve cheating?

Question

There has been a lot of fun and hype in Adobe Air lately. He deserves it and are there any worthy Adobe competitors in this space? The only Adobe Air application I've used is TweetDeck .., although I don't like it, it could be a design / usability issue with the user interface.

Answer 1

One code base, many platforms.

Flex / Air delivers what Java promised 10-15 years ago.

In Java, many companies created their own Java Runtime, and everything became platform-to-platform incompatible. Microsoft responded with its WPF / Silverlight, it is capable, but in many ways it does not have more than 10 years of rich media history that Flash makes.

What is remarkable about Air / Flex is that it really provides the same experience across multiple platforms, which is very small. Penetration of Flash Player is as ubiquitous as in a web browser. No need to install 40 MB .net runtime or download Java, or endorse this or that. It just works. We also invite the recent open source of flexible / flash standards.

I think Air can be a breakthrough technology. Adobe can calmly and skillfully provide a full desktop (ala www.buzzword.com) in a browser without the AJAX fight with which google documents were supposed to go.

Answer 2

I programmed Flex, and it seems a bit like Java to me ... you can work anywhere and do pretty serious work, if you don't mind starting a virtual machine, t integrate closely with your platform’s own capabilities.

It really does a fantastic job of making developer tools familiar to those who work on the Internet ... using CSS to control the look of your application; only this CSS really does what you tell it without dealing with browser issues (IE6, I look at you.)

You can integrate perfectly with flash assets and programmatically do everything you see, a flash widget ... transitions, special effects, etc. everything is at your disposal.

You can use container layouts to organize your widgets and avoid this feeling when flash memory uses all the small fonts it can use so that they cannot scroll (or for some reason people flash like small fonts.)

Most of the developers I know who used Flex / Air find this really fantastic. I think ActionScript3 has a long way to go to provide a foundation for things like containers competing with Python. Or the ability to integrate with local OS and device drivers ...

But what really works is that Adobe has amazing browser penetration, and Flex is a great way for programmers to write Flash applications, and it’s a huge plus that these applications can also work on the desktop. Since Adobe covers all the bases completely, they will still be a good solution for software development. (For now, you don’t need to integrate closely with the OS or work on iPod Touch, etc.)

Answer 3

Similarly, at Microsoft World, the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) gets a lot of hype and starts filtering more and more into real-world projects.

How justified the hype around the "Air", I think you will have to look at it yourself and make your own decision.

Answer 4

I don’t feel that he deserves a hype. I guess I'm a little biased, I don't like Adobe products (I feel like they're bloated, slow and just plain ugly). But it's just me - to each his own :-)

Silverlight is a big competitor in my opinion, and I prefer it (although it has a few bugs that I think Microsoft should never have sent in 2.0).

Answer 5

Actually, I don’t think so ... I believe that nowadays, users can just be confused about how it works and what it is useful for. But that can change. More and more developers will write applications for AIR, and users can accept it.

I like to see that there is a competitor to Silverlight, because, as always: The competition is good for business.

Some useful information: http://www.webglossary.co.uk/article-what-is-adobe-air.asp

Answer 6

I am also not impressed with most of the Air applications that I used. Balsamiq Mockups is a notable exception. Using this is such a good experience that I generally look at Air in general.

Answer 7

As a programmer who developed desktop applications using many standard technologies (Win32, MFC, Java, .NET, etc.), and who developed web applications using AJAX technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) .), I can’t imagine why on earth someone would want to torture themselves using web technologies to create desktop applications. The web technology stack has evolved in a restricted environment with a specific set of goals (e.g. web browser, portability, thin client, no installation, etc.). This is an incomprehensible mess in which there is no comprehensive forethought or design. This is not "easy" for non-engineers. So --- WHY Air?