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Adobe’s Apollo No Longer Up in AIR as Runtime Debuts


By David Rubinstein
July 1, 2007 — 
To take advantage of the reach of the browser, but to get beyond its limitations, Adobe Systems in mid-June released the first public beta of a new desktop client runtime. It also unveiled a beta of the Flex 3 development environment, with the first steps taken toward taking the project open source.

Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is the formal name given to the Apollo runtime project, and it now has transparent HTML support—meaning developers can move beyond the browser chrome to create a custom look-and-feel for Web applications. It also now works with AJAX, has the ability to work with multiple windows, and possesses drag-and-drop capability. SQLite is now part of the runtime, so data can be cached locally.

“Web applications have gravitated to the browser for two advantages—they have reach, and they are more approachable to a broader developer base,” said AIR senior product manager Mike Downey. But [rich Internet applications] are limited running inside a browser. So, how do you get the reach but provide options?”

The desktop client gives users options the browser can’t provide: the ability to work on applications offline, to read and write files to disk, and to tie in system notifications, among many other advantages, Downey said.

He explained that AIR goes beyond the Flash Player because Flash lives in the browser and is constrained by the browser, while AIR resides on the desktop, providing more capabilities than can now be delivered via the browser.

AIR also can let developers use PDF content in their applications, thanks to support for Adobe Reader 8.1 or higher. And, at Adobe Labs, an extension to Adobe’s Dreamweaver enables those developers to build AIR applications in that tool, where AJAX support is extensive, Downey added.

“This is the next generation of our RIA platform,” said Dave Gruber, group product marketing manager for Flex.

The Flex 3 release marks the beginning of Adobe’s promise to take the product open source. Adobe will deliver the public road map for Flex, along with the bug base, Gruber said.

The release includes a number of major new features, Gruber said. While AIR provides base-level APIs for direct connectivity to the client database, the Flex 3 framework allows developers to work with local data and sync it with the remote server via Lifecycle ES Data Services (formerly Flex Data Services).

Also new is the inclusion of an AIR debugger in Flex Builder, the design tool; application packaging and signing for Flex applications to deploy on AIR; code refactoring tools; and the ability to cache the Flex framework inside the Flash Player.

Integration with Adobe’s Creative Studio 3 enables developers to create skins and styles in that tool and then layer them into Flex applications, Gruber said. He added that images can be imported from Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator applications.

“People are beginning to see the richness of bringing Adobe’s products together with the old Macromedia products,” Gruber said.


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