Adobe Releases AIR, Flex 3

Adobe can do two things here: market AIR as a next-gen x-plat desktop SDK with Internet goodness, or try to convince people to dump standards websites for their proprietary kit, like they've done with Flash. One is good, one is evil. Just try to shop for a new car without Flash.... like if you have an iPhone.
 
T'hain Esh Kelch said:
I dont see the prospect of this, other than - god forbid - Flash animations and adds in applications.. -.-
Click to expand...

Not to mention that Flash is the SINGLE stupid thing that pushes CPU usage and slows Internet browsing to a crawl on a Mac.

The quality of Adobe's products has gone downhill since at least 10 years ago, and I hope this new technology is not just another display of that...:rolleyes:
 
Small White Car said:
An example...

Using Apple Mail or MS Outlook or whatever is better than using web-mail in a browser.

They're making it so those web-based mail programs could be a lot more like desktop mail programs.

And you "don't like the sound of that?"

This is pretty cool.
Click to expand...

He just meant that he is paranoid of web-based apps having the ability to read/write local files - it does seem like another area for hackers/malware writers to exploit.
 
BRLawyer said:
The quality of Adobe's products has gone downhill since at least 10 years ago, and I hope this new technology is not just another display of that...:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I hope it is. They have been going so downhill since their peak (probably around Illustrator 5 and Photoshop 3). Maybe it's time they died and let better technologies mature. Heh... maybe Microsoft will buy them. That would be a fitting way for them to die an ugly death. :D
 
Oh, wow, great, now I can look at different kind of contents in a whole new way: In a Window!!!!!! Running its own application!!! Oh, wow, can't breathe. Not in a Browser (window) or a widget (window)! With a whole new usability exp(lod)ierience. Have you seen the screen-capture tool for safari? Such a nice color! And it almost works!

I'm just waiting for the first PopupAds on Mac Finder.

Oh, there is an uninstaller. Perfect. Done.

Remember the days where Quicktime offered customization of UI?

Such a waste of programmer energy.
 
How is this new? Is the SDK just now being publicly released?

Adobe's Kuler app and Pownce have both been running on the AIR platform for months now. :confused:
 
so there seems to be a lot of confusion over what these releases are.

let's start with RIA (rich internet applications). the main competitors in this space are Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight and OpenLaszlo. (and to an extent AJAX, but not quite).

so what's an RIA? it's a webapp that looks like and has some of the functionality of a desktop app. instead of getting traditional website page reloads, it's a fluid app. you get the benefit of webapp distribution and the benefit of a desktop look 'n' feel.

for Adobe, that means their Flex apps play in flashplayer. a new Flex release doesn't mean there's a new flashplayer, and it has no bearing on the iphone.

so what is Flex?

mostly, it's an application framework and a component library. you can get an SDK for it, which is free, or you can pay and get FlexBuilder, which is an IDE for developing flex apps. what was released today was a new SDK, Flex 3, and a new IDE, FlexBuilder3.

you code Flex in two languages: mxml (a component tag language) and ActionScript (an OO language, looks a bit like Java and a bit like Javascript). you compile your app into a SWF, which runs in the flashplayer.

note that there's a whole 'nother suite of tools for making flash apps, which are traditionally used by designers. Flex is more geared towards developers.

...

AIR is a newer adobe technology that allows you to take existing flex apps and recompile them to run on the desktop: no browser needed. now, it's just like a typical desktop app, and can access the filesystem and devices. it's no more nor less secure than downloading any other desktop app from the internet.

so what's cool about that? you can write an app once and choose whether to deploy it on the desktop (windows, mac, and i think linux now) or have it run in a browser.

it's cool stuff, actually, and those who are bad-mouthing it without understanding what it is may want to take a step back and actually have a look at it.

disclaimer: i'm a flex app developer. and fwiw, i don't make websites, i make realworld applications with multi-million dollar budgets that just happen to be deployed in a browser.
 
InLikeALion said:
He just meant that he is paranoid of web-based apps having the ability to read/write local files - it does seem like another area for hackers/malware writers to exploit.
Click to expand...

Yeah this was what I immediately thought of as well. It sounds like one giant security hole just waiting to be exploited...

Has anyone learned from the debacle that is ActiveX?
 
FakeWozniak said:
Um, I heard of these before and they are either Widgets or Gadgets. The only new twist is that they look like applications. I even thought I saw some shareware available to set dashboard applications free. Anyone recall the name?

I like that Apple is Adobe-Free with regards to PDFs etc, so I hope nothing useful ever comes of this Hot-AIR project because I will have to go without it. I'd like to be Flash-Free.

I wonder if AIR takes about 30 seconds to load every Adobe plugin known to mankind, indicates an update is available every week, and uses 120MB of disk space. :confused:
Click to expand...


I think a lot of people in this forum do not understand what adobe air is. It's not Konfabulator! This isn't a widget runtime.

The purpose is to allow web programmers to build desktop APPLICATIONS, not just simple widgets. Isn't it nice being able to have access to your email offline with Apple Mail? And isn't it great being able to buy songs online through the iTunes desktop application and not at a separate website? So why don't you like the idea of more programs like this?

AIR applications can include flash but they can ALSO be built in all HTML and include pdf and have access to sql lite databases, and drag and drop from os applications.

And most importantly you write one application that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux!




Other than Flash, I'll use WebKit directly. PDF is an ISO standard and there are plenty of kits to leverage those capabilities
AIR doesn't do a damn thing for me.
Click to expand...

So you have a kit that lets you develop one app that runs on every platform and includes a unified installer, sql lite database access, access to native os functions?

I think you guys should take a closer look at what AIR really is. It lets developers with web programming knowledge who are already building web applications ( in Flash or AJAX ) , and take those applications to the desktop and give them a free and easy way to deploy them on every major platform.


One final example to illustrate what is possible with AIR is Buzzword. Buzzword is an online word processor built with flex. Soon Buzzword will release an AIR application.

Which means:
- you can get a free word processor
- which runs on every major platform
- you can sync all your documents online
- have access to them and the word processor at buzzword.com
-and have access to all your documents offline using the desktop AIR application.



IMHO I find that pretty compelling.
 
dr_lha said:
No way is the iPhone SDK going to be related to this in any way shape or form. Sorry folks, this is totally unrelated.
Click to expand...

100% agree.
The alternative is just, plain, moronic*.
Neat tech, but no correlation to an iPhone SDK.


* which is to say, I just can't see any reason why Apple would work so hard to create a new platform, only to turn around and tie their SDK to another software company. I graduated from art school. That said, seems like bad business idea of the year caliber thinking, to me.
 
Toe said:
It's like Adobe is competing with themselves to see how many Adobe brands they can fit into one product description.

AIR builds RIAs, which may incorporate Flex and Flash, using Flex Builder 3, which is based on Eclipse, and which integrates with Creative Suite 3.

Did I get that right? :) They use the term "open source" a lot, but they are all about creating an Adobe-proprietary world. (Just like Microsoft... and yes Apple too.)
Click to expand...

+1!

Open source has become THE buzz word in the world of software.
But having 'the community' create stuff, in a proprietary format, seems less than open to me. But maybe I'm missing something.
 
As cool as all of this is (and I do understand it, I'm a professional software developer), I can't help thinking that a lot of the benefits are only applicable to programmers and not to end users. Ok, writing one app for web and all desktop platforms is compelling. However, to achieve the best user experience on any desktop platform, the best way is always native (Cocoa for Mac, .Net for Windows). Java has already proven this. There are numerous problems with look and feel, which is especially important to Mac users in particular. And this isn't needless fanboy-ism. Apple put a lot of effort into user experience because it is incredibly important. Having a GUI universal across the web and all desktop platforms will result in a lot of bad interfaces. You can get away with crap on the web, but desktop standards are a lot higher.
Also, by not having access to the frameworks native to the platform, you shut yourself out from an incredible amount of free functionality and ways of creating apps that are immediately familiar with end users.
I think products like this are a fantastic step forward. However, 'write once - deploy anywhere' apps are never best in class. AIR does nothing to change that.
 
lazyrighteye said:
+1!

Open source has become THE buzz word in the world of software.
But having 'the community' create stuff, in a proprietary format, seems less than open to me. But maybe I'm missing something.
Click to expand...


Did I get that right? They use the term "open source" a lot, but they are all about creating an Adobe-proprietary world. (Just like Microsoft... and yes Apple too.)
Click to expand...


What about this exactly is propietary?
Air runtime = free
Flash player = free & parts of it open sourced through mozilla
Flex SDK (for creating flash applications) = free & open source
Flash remoting (blaze ds) = free & open source
Creating html/ajax = free
Sql lite = free
pdf = open standard
 
Toe said:
It's like Adobe is competing with themselves to see how many Adobe brands they can fit into one product description.

AIR builds RIAs, which may incorporate Flex and Flash, using Flex Builder 3, which is based on Eclipse, and which integrates with Creative Suite 3.

Did I get that right? :) They use the term "open source" a lot, but they are all about creating an Adobe-proprietary world. (Just like Microsoft... and yes Apple too.)
Click to expand...

No. AIR basically allows any level of web developer the ability to create web-enabled desktop apps. So if you just know Javascript/AJAX/HTML, you can create a desktop app. If you are a programming FLEX genius, you can do the same too. This is very smart on Adobe's part.

For those trying to link this to Apple and the iPhone. Fat chance. They are no where related until the AIR plugin becomes iPhone-friendly.
 
stadidas said:
As cool as all of this is (and I do understand it, I'm a professional software developer), I can't help thinking that a lot of the benefits are only applicable to programmers and not to end users. Ok, writing one app for web and all desktop platforms is compelling. However, to achieve the best user experience on any desktop platform, the best way is always native (Cocoa for Mac, .Net for Windows). Java has already proven this. There are numerous problems with look and feel, which is especially important to Mac users in particular. And this isn't needless fanboy-ism. Apple put a lot of effort into user experience because it is incredibly important. Having a GUI universal across the web and all desktop platforms will result in a lot of bad interfaces. You can get away with crap on the web, but desktop standards are a lot higher.
Also, by not having access to the frameworks native to the platform, you shut yourself out from an incredible amount of free functionality and ways of creating apps that are immediately familiar with end users.
I think products like this are a fantastic step forward. However, 'write once - deploy anywhere' apps are never best in class. AIR does nothing to change that.
Click to expand...

As for look and feel you're able to select the native systems look or you can create your own l&f. It's up to the developer.
 
davepelz said:
What about this exactly is propietary?
Air runtime = free
Flash player = free & parts of it open sourced through mozilla
Flex SDK (for creating flash applications) = free & open source
Flash remoting (blaze ds) = free & open source
Creating html/ajax = free
Sql lite = free
pdf = open standard
Click to expand...

Not bashing you because I actually think this is an interesting development...
BUT, "proprietary" and "free" have nothing in common, you dilute your argument by using "free".
 
RIA-- another silly, meaningless acronym. Internet applications went nowhere, so then they went to "rich" internet applications to differentiate from the market for "poor" internet applications. Now a silly acronym in the hopes of building a subculture of people who know what it stands for and throw it around like it has weight...

To whoever said this "isn't widgets"-- it is. Just bigger widgets.

I, for one, wish companies would spend less time building new frameworks for web development and focus on fixing the web as it is. For a technology that should be cross-platform by nature it's a freaking mess.

Maybe it's just a cranky Monday, but this just strikes me as another rapid development framework for web developers who want to be desktop developers and that is going to churn out half a dozen toy applications. Next week Facebook will counter with a framework for "rich social applications" and Google will announce plans for another "perpetual beta project".
 
crees! said:
As for look and feel you're able to select the native systems look or you can create your own l&f. It's up to the developer.
Click to expand...

They did that in Java too and it doesn't work very well. I'm not saying AIR won't be better in that department, but you still won't have access to native interface widgets directly.

My main problem with the whole idea is that it means you have less code to write, which is great, but the end user gets shafted with a product that would have been better if it had been done normal way. Yes it's more work, yes it's harder. That's what we're paid to do. We're paid to do the right thing.
A much better happy medium is to have an application akin to iTunes. It uses the web where appropriate, and does it within a proper application container. You get the benefits of the web via the use of a web service, plus the benefits of the desktop, without all the needless wheel re-inventing.
When developers start making decisions based on making their lives easier, rather than what's best for the customer, then they're failing the customer.
 
Bob Knob said:
Not bashing you because I actually think this is an interesting development...
BUT, "proprietary" and "free" have nothing in common, you dilute your argument by using "free".
Click to expand...

yea thats a good point. i guess what i meant was that while the runtime may be proprietary, you can build the applications using all open source. And given Adobe's recent trend with open sourcing flex, flash remoting and open sourcing more of the flash player, I guess i wouldn't be surprised if AIR went in this direction also. Even if they didn't, I'm not sure I would just label this as an evil ploy by Adobe to trap all of us in their software, I see it more as a cool innovation.
 
bytethese said:
But will it enable Flash on my iPhone? Will it make it "snappier"? :)
Click to expand...

I don't know why everyone is so eager to have flash on the iphone. The only thing that makes the iphone not miserable to use on edge is the lack of flash ads you'd normally get. To me not having flash is a god send cause I don't have to deal with ads or flash animation banners on my small screen taking up space. I think that is the real reason apple chose not to put flash support on it. The thing flash is most used for on the web is videos and ads, apple gave up the youtube app to take care of the videos and let us escape most of the bad flashy ads. So before crying because you want flash, just think how much slower your experience will be when your iphone will start loading all those flash ads and banners with every page.
 
Analog Kid said:
this just strikes me as another rapid development framework for web developers who want to be desktop developers and that is going to churn out half a dozen toy applications.
Click to expand...

though i'm sure there'll be tons of useless toys, i am working on enterprise applications in flex that i assure you are not toys.

i started developing professionally in 1989, and i can't image this one particular enterprise app done in anything except flex. not even java.

imho, people are being a bit quick to judge w/o knowing, really, anything about flex.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Back
Top