Recently, Adobe Systems released a new, and very innovative piece of free software called AIR. As far as I can tell, this program seems to be a synthesis of the concepts driving Java and already-existing web technologies like Flash and Shockwave. As I just found out about AIR, I haven’t really had enough time to give a test-drive on my Windows machine. The interesting thing, in my opinion, will be to see if it is truly cross-platform. The AIR FAQ indicates that version 1.0 doesn’t support Linux, but that subsequent versions may. I found this lack of support to be perplexing given the superficial similarities between the AIR concept and Java, the latter of which is cross-platform and does support Linux.
Again, I have not had enough time to really investigate AIR, but it does seem quite interesting to offer a runtime environment which utilises already-existing web-based technologies. Some sites (like AOL, eBay, and Nickelodeon) have already come up with AIR desktop programs. To see more about these implementations, visit the respective Adobe case study pages:
For a basic overview of the new runtime environment, Adobe AIR, see the AIR: Get Started page.
|:| Zach |:|
1 comments
Ebay looks as though it would be very easy to find those items that we just can’t live without. That could be scary for some of us.