Adobe AIR and You (Or why this is important)

[zudien]

It seems like the buzz around here is either about 2.1 or integrated Flash in the browser.

However with the announcement today that AIR will be included on mobile platforms, this is something to be more excited about.

I posted this in another thread:

With the inclusion of AIR we are gonna see some sweet stuff.

Basically AIR (Adobe Intergrated Runtime) is an environment that is cross platform and incorporates AJAX, Flash, HTML. So if Adobe pushes out AIR to phones a developer could theoretically write one applications and have it run on all the major phone OS's.

This makes it more worthwhile for the developer and the app envy we sometimes have of other phones will be become less and less common.

Here's some info on AIR
Adobe Integrated Runtime - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Adobe Shows Flash and AIR Apps for Google Android - PCWorld This link has a cool video showing AIR being used on the Droid running a couple applications.

and finally

AIR For Android, And Adobe’s Plan To Deliver Apps Across All Mobile Devices

AIR is already pretty mature on the desktop/laptop/netbook platform here's a link to some things you can try right now
Adobe Marketplace - Welcome to the Adobe Marketplace.

 

[R1Lover]

how many threads do we need on this?

 

[zudien]

how many threads do we need on this?

12.

It works better that way.

 

[huskur]

I understand.

AIR > Flash

 

[zudien]

I understand.

AIR > Flash

Actually techinically

AIR = Flash.

However Flash is only going to give us the ability to play intergrated videos and some small games and see websites that were otherwise unavailable. Also get spammed by huge flash advertisements that were poorly coded. Not a huge jump.

AIR will create a multi phone platform to develop apps. We will see an influx of good looking apps that aren't as resource heavy.

 

[natediddy1120]

It does look pretty sweet:icon_ banana: I can't hold it in....

 

[qoncept]

AIR is stupid and shouldn't exist. It duplicates the functionality of Flash, it gives you one more thing to keep updated, it's slow and clunky, and "an environment that is cross platform and incorporates AJAX, Flash, HTML" sounds a whole lot like "web browser."

AIR is Adobe's me-too attempt at cross platform capability, and apparently they wanted to cast of the stigma of Flash which has been beaten to death. The biggest problem is that Adobe is HORRIBLE at developing such software.

 

[wuyanks]

LOL this is like the 9th thread on Adobe AIR... OP: we get it we get it, AIR is great :icon_ devil:

that being said, i'm interested where this will go. the demos from Adobe's site (OP's link?) aren't so impressive

 

[zudien]

AIR is stupid and shouldn't exist. It duplicates the functionality of Flash, it gives you one more thing to keep updated, it's slow and clunky,

Of course it duplicates the functionality of flash. It's part of the environment. Thats like saying java duplicates the functionality of AJAX.

Also since the later updates they have improved the speed. Also it's up to the developer to keep the program up to speed and keep it from being clunky. In fact I still find Java to be more "slow and clunky" than AIR does especially on other platforms.

and "an environment that is cross platform and incorporates AJAX, Flash, HTML" sounds a whole lot like "web browser."

The big difference is that it is a standalone runtime environment that allows you to run a program independent of a web browser. I guess if you have no problem running web applications then this wouldn't be a big deal.

However AIR on a mobile platform will allow you to run applications natively while giving greater functionality of being able to use more phone resources, not just what the browser allows you to.

Of course nothing in AIR is unduplicable from a natively coded application but what it does is gives a decent cross platform environment to develop programs so you can have a greater distribution with less work overall.

AIR is Adobe's me-too attempt at cross platform capability, and apparently they wanted to cast of the stigma of Flash which has been beaten to death. The biggest problem is that Adobe is HORRIBLE at developing such software.

I am not an Adobe fanboy. However the stigma of flash is due to incapable software developers. With the exception of a couple security holes (some of which are still open), flash has still been on the edge of development. Flash is a privately developed platform which allows it to push ahead instead of something like HTML which is voted on by members for standardization and distribution.

However developing AIR couldn't destroy the "stigma of Flash" because Flash is integral to AIR applications.

I would say that Adobe isn't horrible at developing such software because of the distribution of said software. They are the market leader. With the finalization of HTML5 (which will duplicate some flash features with <canvas>) you will see another development in the Adobe camp to keep it up to date.

Flash has it's flaws but most I see are from developers then on Adobe side.

 

[pc747]

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-general-discussions/23061-adobe-air-flash-droid.html

seems like you all are discussing the same thing.

Any way I want flash capabilities to enjoy sports no matter how adobe decides to provide it.

 

[zudien]

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-general-discussions/23061-adobe-air-flash-droid.html

seems like you all are discussing the same thing.

Any way I want flash capabilities to enjoy sports no matter how adobe decides to provide it.

Yes I posted in that thread and wanted to seperate the flash plugin and AIR topic.

For you the difference between flash and AIR is that with flash you could watching the video in a browser with flash and limited to the browser. However with AIR you could watch the same video in it's own application and allow you to have personalization settings (bandwith, color, scrolling sports scores, social networking, ETC) . The main functionality is duplicated of course but the environment factor is increased significantly in AIR.

 

[pc747]

I just do not want the hundreds of geico adds cluttering up and slowing my phone down. I agree with Jobs that it can be ridiculous, but I will not go as far as steve jobs: here is his quote

Steve Jobs held a Town Hall meeting last week, and gave employees in attendance the chance to ask the big man on campus any questions they may have. Of course, the iPad was discussed and Jobs touched on the device's lack of Flash support. Jobs branded Adobe 'lazy,' claiming the company had a lot of potential to do interesting things but, "they just refuse to do it."
Jobs was quoted as saying the reason Apple does not support Flash is "because it is so buggy." "Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash," Steve says, adding that, "The world is moving to HTML5."
As for Google's recent foray into the phone market and the fact that the company is now competing with Apple? Steve isn't scared. "We did not enter the search business," Jobs said. "They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them," he says. According to a Wired source in attendance, someone else then asked a question, changing the subject completely but "there was no getting Jobs off this rant." He went on to say, "I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing. This don’t be evil mantra: It’s bull****."
Another source has since disputed reports that Jobs called the Google mantra 'bull****,' claiming Steve actually called it, "a load of crap."
Either way, it's pretty clear that Steve Jobs has no intention of letting Google take down the iPhone. Do you think Steve Jobs has something to be worried about? Let us know in the comments below.

Adobe's response:
Flash won't be replaced by HTML5 anytime soon, according to this CTO.

Zoom
Earlier this month Steve Jobs made headlines when he declared that Google's "Don’t Be Evil!" motto was a load of crap and Adobe was just plain lazy. Now, Adobe doesn’t take kindly to that kind of talk and on Tuesday, CTO Kevin Lynch took to the Adobe blog to discuss the future of Flash.
Beginning with the snide snipe, "Some have been surprised at the lack of inclusion of Flash Player on a recent magical device," Lynch published a blog post defending Flash, which Steve Jobs said was pretty much dead anyway. According to Jobs, Flash will soon be obsolete because, "the world is moving toward HTML5."
Lynch points out that over 85 percent of the top web sites contain Flash content and Flash runs on over 98 percent of computers on the Web. "It is used for the majority of casual games, video, and animation on the Web and familiar brands like Nike, Hulu, BBC, Major League Baseball, and more rely on Flash to deliver the most compelling experiences to over a billion people," he writes.
Lynch also disagrees with the notion that soon HTML5 will replace Flash. "Some point to HTML as eventually supplanting the need for Flash," he writes, adding that he doesn't see it happening in the foreseeable future. Mr. Lynch claims that users and content creators could be 'thrown back to the dark ages of video on the web' if faced with the compatibility issues of HTML5.

"Adobe supports HTML and its evolution and we look forward to adding more capabilities to our software around HTML as it evolves. If HTML could reliably do everything Flash does that would certainly save us a lot of effort, but that does not appear to be coming to pass. Even in the case of video, where Flash is enabling over 75% of video on the Web today, the coming HTML video implementations cannot agree on a common format across browsers, so users and content creators would be thrown back to the dark ages of video on the Web with incompatibility issues."
​

And, in contrast to Steve's statement about Adobe being 'lazy' and not doing enough with its potential, Lynch says:
"We have shown that Flash technology is starting to work on these [Apple] devices today by enabling standalone applications for the iPhone to be built on Flash … This same solution will work on the iPad as well."
According to Lynch Adobe is ready to enable Flash in the [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]browser[/COLOR][/COLOR] on these devices "if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users," but to date Adobe has not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen



Back on topic: point being is I want it for sports whether it be in its own window(browser) or on the site itself as long as I get my sports and minus 100 viagra ads. I am willing to buy the paid version to get rid of the adds.

 

[qoncept]

Of course it duplicates the functionality of flash. It's part of the environment. Thats like saying java duplicates the functionality of AJAX.

I'm not intimately familiar, but since Adobe owns flash, wouldn't have made sense just to provide a container for Flash to allow it to run natively, rather than build an entire new technology to provide the same thing? It already exists in the development environment.

Also since the later updates they have improved the speed. Also it's up to the developer to keep the program up to speed and keep it from being clunky. In fact I still find Java to be more "slow and clunky" than AIR does especially on other platforms.

My biggest issue here is more the clunkiness, not the speed. I sure hope I never use a big enough app written for AIR that the speed is an issue. I use a Mac at home and pretty much every app follows Apple's design guidelines and it provides a very unified environment. AIR doesn't fit in it at all, and I have no reason to expect it would on mobile platforms. Microsoft is dumb enought to think they should start breaking that unified appearance with their own apps, so I doubt a Windows user would take much notice.

and "an environment that is cross platform and incorporates AJAX, Flash, HTML" sounds a whole lot like "web browser."

However AIR on a mobile platform will allow you to run applications natively while giving greater functionality of being able to use more phone resources, not just what the browser allows you to.

True but... I get the distinct feeling Apple, at least, won't allow it on the iPhone. The very concent pretty clearly violates their no-interpreted-code rule. See: no Java. Many people's reaction will be "who cares? we aren't using the iPhone" but, assuming I'm right, there will still be at least 2 mobile platforms to develop for, and based on app sales stats, AIR isn't much more likely to draw many more developers than Android was before.

I am not an Adobe fanboy. However the stigma of flash is due to incapable software developers.

I don't disagree with this at all. Same as Javascript, really. I didn't mean to imply Flash was bad, but there definitely is a stigma associated with it.

I would say that Adobe isn't horrible at developing such software because of the distribution of said software. They are the market leader. With the finalization of HTML5 (which will duplicate some flash features with <canvas>) you will see another development in the Adobe camp to keep it up to date.

I think they are the leader by default. Flash was already hugely successful before Adobe bought it from Macromedia, and they haven't really done much to improve it since. With the only incentive to switch to Silverlight being political/financial, it's had no competition.

Anyway, what that stemmed from was my extreme bitterness toward Acrobat reader, the most bloated, slow, piece of garbage software I've ever used (though Office 2007 is a huge step in that direction). The market they invented. Adobe can't do its own bread and butter right. There are a dozens of freeware PDF readers that are significantly better than Adobe's own. It's hard for me to take anything else they do seriously when they can screw that up so completely.

 

[zudien]

I'm not intimately familiar, but since Adobe owns flash, wouldn't have made sense just to provide a container for Flash to allow it to run natively, rather than build an entire new technology to provide the same thing? It already exists in the development environment.

Well AIR is basically just a container that extends the functionality by adding in the other stuff. The core of most AIR applications is flash.

My biggest issue here is more the clunkiness, not the speed. I sure hope I never use a big enough app written for AIR that the speed is an issue. I use a Mac at home and pretty much every app follows Apple's design guidelines and it provides a very unified environment. AIR doesn't fit in it at all, and I have no reason to expect it would on mobile platforms. Microsoft is dumb enought to think they should start breaking that unified appearance with their own apps, so I doubt a Windows user would take much notice.

I agree with you. I don't care for Apple but the point you make is valid point. AIR would suck for a unified environment on a desktop. Apple spends a lot of time to make sure that unified environment is intact. I think in the mobile environment this is more a moot point. Since these apps will mostly be full screen items and the experience is hardly shared anyways. For instance on my droid there are a couple of programs that block the notification bar and some that incorporate it. Each program has it's own designers idea of what the interface should look like as well. The iPhone is a little better at this but the phone that does this the best is webOS phones. They have very specific specifications to their apps to get approved with overall phone functionality. p

True but... I get the distinct feeling Apple, at least, won't allow it on the iPhone. The very concent pretty clearly violates their no-interpreted-code rule. See: no Java. Many people's reaction will be "who cares? we aren't using the iPhone" but, assuming I'm right, there will still be at least 2 mobile platforms to develop for, and based on app sales stats, AIR isn't much more likely to draw many more developers than Android was before.

If I recall correctly that flash can be used on the iPhone through Adobe iPhone packager. I am not that familar with Apples development policies however from what I have read is that AIR applications will be able to be compiled withe packager as well. So who knows.

I don't disagree with this at all. Same as Javascript, really. I didn't mean to imply Flash was bad, but there definitely is a stigma associated with it.
I think they are the leader by default. Flash was already hugely successful before Adobe bought it from Macromedia, and they haven't really done much to improve it since. With the only incentive to switch to Silverlight being political/financial, it's had no competition.

I agree with you here again. I think the development of flash has stalled quite a bit. Then again I am not sure whats in this next release of flash 10.1. I think Adobe with a market in the mobile environment facing a steeper competition with natively code apps might step up the game. This is of course is wishful thinking that exists in the same universe where I ride a unicorn that eats gum drops and poops rainbows to work.

Anyway, what that stemmed from was my extreme bitterness toward Acrobat reader, the most bloated, slow, piece of garbage software I've ever used (though Office 2007 is a huge step in that direction). The market they invented. Adobe can't do its own bread and butter right. There are a dozens of freeware PDF readers that are significantly better than Adobe's own. It's hard for me to take anything else they do seriously when they can screw that up so completely.

Well the PDF is the industry standard for rich text applications. Their native reader sucks (although it has gotten better recently, maybe I have just bought faster computers). However the PDF cut Microsoft off from owning the industry standard that was just as awful and constantly changing and requiring updates (.doc). At least I know with a PDF when I open it up it will constantly be the same and look the same no matter what program I open it up in or what OS.

I guess we will see. I share a lot of your same sentiments I just am on the optimistic side of things.