What is Adobe Air?

Question

What exactly is Adobe Air? I've seen a lot of people talking about it and I've even seen applications for it but I'm still not entirely sure what makes it unique or how it is different from other languages. Can someone please give me the concise version from a programmer's point of view?

Edit: I wasn't familiar with Flex so I found this nice explanation: http://www.onflex.org/ted/2008/01/what-is-flex.php

Oceania

Answer 1

In a nutshell.

Start with the assumption that you know what Flex and Actionscript are. Then take the fact that they both run exclusively in your browser and to all intents and purposes are for building web apps.

Now assume you want to develop the same app, with the same language and user interface resources, but run it as a desktop app on a workstion (PC, Mac, or Linux interchangeably).

AIR is what you add (as a link library) to Flex and Actionscript to accomplish that.

Accordingly

Additionally the AIR runtime includes the Webkit HMTL rendering engine (Webkit is also used by Apple Safari and Google Chrome browsers), and can interpret JavaScript. (In contrast, Flex ActionScript3 must be compiled into .swf files before can be executed in the Flash or AIR runtimes.) – Either

Also important to note that AIR applications can be built with HTML and Javascript... although I've only ever built them with Flex and ActionScript. – Riplex

Alas, one of the deficiencies of AIR is inability to launch other processes. Java, in contrast, has Runtime.exec() and Process class for doing that. This is the most frequently cited lack of feature for Adobe to address regarding AIR. – Either

@Either - agreed - I've had to deal with the no-exec() issue too. – Accordingly

Answer 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Integrated_Runtime Write cross-platform desktop apps in Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax.

Easting

Answer 3

Adobe Air is a framework which allows to build desktop applications and it is based on HTML/JS and Flash.

Yecies

Answer 4

Adobe Air its Flash Runtime that can run Flash inside it and provide access to your operation system.

Adobe Air can be used for gaming and software as usual Flash. Its stand alone flash player with extended and reach functionality. For example you can develop flash app that will interact with filesystem or hardware.

Also its support native extensions so you can extend Air using native C/Java libraries.

air can be produced as exe for windows, app for mac, ipa for ios, apk for android, linux with limitations and blackberry.

Crabtree

Answer 5

Adobe Air is cross platform language/tool for mobile, window and OSX application.

Voelker