Adobe’s Apollo to revolutionize web apps?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 19 March 2007 13:38

Opinion and Analysis

Not just the Roman God of the sun, medicine and much more, Apollo is now a new cross platform rich online application development environment that Adobe hopes will truly shine!

Just released as an alpha version from the Adobe Labs site, Adobe tells us that Apollo specifically is “the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop”.

The final version 1.0 isn’t due until the end of the year, with the software still yet to reach a beta stage, but clearly Adobe hopes to harness the alpha and beta periods to iron out the bugs and deliver what will be a solid application development environment. Adobe also promise “additional developer resources” at that time, too.

Adobe’s website tells us that Apollo “enables developers to create applications that combine the benefits of web applications – network and user connectivity, rich media content, ease of development, and broad reach – with the strengths of desktop applications – application interactions, local resource access, personal settings, powerful functionality, and rich interactive experiences”.

Of course, what’s a marketing blurb without something to back it up? Bringing in the big guns, Adobe has a demo app that’s being built by eBay to show how they may well be engaging customers in the future.

Adobe wants this environment to be richly featured so developers can likewise create rich environments for consumers and business to enjoy and fully take advantage of. To that end, Adobe is promising “familiar application interaction models, including drag-and-drop support, rich clipboard access, and desktop and system shortcuts”.

In addition, Apollo apps don’t need to run inside a web browser, but are standalone applications that operate through a ‘runtime’, much like Flash apps can be run outside of a web browser if desired.

Developers are advised that the Apollo Developer SDK is an alpha, with future versions to offer better stability, enhanced Ajax support and much more, although they have gathered a good collection of developer resources, including articles, videos and sample apps to play with.

Apollo runs on Windows and Macs, with a Linux version planned, and interestingly, Adobe’s upcoming Creative Suite 3 will have the ability to help create Apollo based content, showing how closely Adobe has thought about things, wanting to tie everything in together.

Of course, Apollo is not the only such development environment for building ‘rich online applications’ that work in a cross-platform way. Adobe’s own Flash environment is one such example, Ajax is another that is popular with may Web 2.0 companies and developers out there, and even Microsoft is wanting a piece of the action with their ‘Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere’ initiative, along with other companies trying to also do the same thing.

Web 2.0 (and Web 3.0 and whatever else comes next) is undergoing a rapid transformation into platform independent software that is richly Internet connected and offers what is meant to be a luscious user interface for consumers on any device.

That’s been a promise from many companies for some time now, and they are all trying to make it come true!