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Fuzzy Logic Adobe's AIR is RIA-lly good
Fuzzy Logic Adobe's AIR is RIA-lly good | Adobe's AIR is RIA-lly good |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Monday, 11 June 2007 | |
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Page 1 of 2 Adobe is breathing new air and life into the world of web browsers and the ability to run online applications when offline with the Adobe Intergrated Runtime, or AIR, and their now publicly available SDK. AIR lets developers create ‘rich Internet applications’ (RIA) in HTML with CSS, AJAX, Flash or Adobe’s new Flex software, and then use the ‘embedded local database’ and more in Adobe’s AIR to make offline cross-platform web apps that you can run anytime a reality for everyone, instead of being cut off when you’re not connected. Kevin Lynch, senior VP and Chief Software Architect at Adobe, said in a statement that: “Adobe AIR represents a new medium, as the best of the Web and the best of the desktop come together. Adobe AIR expands the universe of possibilities for Web developers who can now deliver a new generation of applications that work across operating systems and both inside and outside the browser, bridging the gap between the Web and the personal computer.” In addition, Adobe allows Dreamweaver CS3 projects to be exported into Adobe AIR applications. AIR also supports PDF documents, letting an AIR application read and display PDF files. The database built into AIR which lets in work in an offline environment was carefully chose to be open source, fully embedded, cross platform and base on SQL. According to Adobe, it’s now fully built into the latest beta with a “large data capacity and full text search”. Ben Galbraith, co-founder of Ajaxian, said that “Ajax developers have helped define Web 2.0 by making Web applications more interactive and usable. Adobe AIR allows Ajax developers to use their skills to take Web 2.0 to the desktop--without requiring them to learn a whole new set of skills. By exposing rich desktop and Flash functionality to Ajax developers as another set of JavaScript APIs, Adobe AIR opens up a whole new world of possibilities.” Part of Adobe’s strategy also involves the new Flex 3 public beta, a cross platform, free open source framework for creating rich Internet applications to rival HTML and AJAX, as Adobe strives to maintain dominance in the ever evolving Web 2.0 space. In its current beta, Flex 3 is not open source, but full open source compliance is promised when the final code goes live later this year. Parker Harris, from salesforce.com said that “Developers who build on-demand business applications with the Salesforce Platform can already use Adobe Flex to add rich user interfaces to their solutions, and now with Adobe AIR they can be further extended with the persistent desktop functionality and interactivity AIR enables, making on-demand business applications more compelling than ever.” As noted, offline apps will not necessarily have to run in a browser, but with AIR software able to run in its own window as an independent program, if desired. They will also be cross platform, running across all major operating systems, and given the many different ways an Adobe AIR application can be created, will certainly empower a much larger range of people to be able to create applications that run on both the web and the desktop than ever before. But any influx of new developers will be competing against some of the Internet’s heavyweights, many of whom have gained some serious experience in the world of ‘software as a service’, or SaaS. A number of online ‘Office’ compatible suites have emerged, from Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets through to the ThinkFree Office Suite and Zoho’s Office and host of other online apps. Haven't companies like Thinkfree offered offline versions of their apps for some time now? And what about potentially unexpected apps like advertising presentations or malware? Please read onto page 2 for the conclusion! |
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