Comments on: Adobe AIR Ships: Do You Care?

By: Mitchell

Mitchell — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:31:10 +0000

All I use is Twirl and Pownce

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:57:58 +0000

If you’re a developer don’t focus on AIR. Look at Flex Builder and think about how you can now develop an app with all the complexity, interactivity, speed and media power of a desktop app and then consider that whether you are going to deploy to a web page or the desktop or both is almost no longer an issue ! Flex is the big story, and AIR is just a new deployment target of Flex.

The “do you care” question is silly.
Average users don’t need to care. They’ll get excited when their favourite site (eg. eBay) offers a desktop version though, and eBay will get the glory, not AIR.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:34:58 +0000

never heard of it either, not a big fan of Adobe or Flash, tried AIR didn’t like it, why?

What is exactly the difference (USP’s?) for me as a user with other software?

Hooray, is there now a software application for every site I visit? And then do I need to install software for every place I visit? Sounds like fun!

By: jeremy

jeremy — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:23:01 +0000

hmmm never heard of this AIR thingy, so I guess… nope.

By: David Tucker

David Tucker — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:15:44 +0000

@FiZ – I am afraid you might be a bit short sighted on this one. With companies like Ebay, Nasdaq, AOL, and MTV all launching (or have launched) AIR applications – it will become commonplace for the average user quite quickly – they won’t even have to know that it is AIR. Last I checked, Ebay isn’t jumping for Prism.

By: FiZ

FiZ — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:20:20 +0000

I’ve got it installed, but so far, almost every application that I’ve found for AIR is either A) incompatible with the current version of AIR, B) Nothing that isn’t better accomplished with a website in Prizm, C) buggy and broken despite being compatible with the newest version, or D) worthless due to its own lack of merit.

I think it’s going to be a LONG time before any of these technologies becomes ubiquitous though. Sure, us nerds and geeks will go nuts over it as it becomes more useful, but the majority of people on the internet won’t even know what silverlight/air/prizm/etc. are for the next 2 years, at least.

By: J.J. Merrick

J.J. Merrick — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:40:36 +0000

I care, but I am a developer so it means more to me. I think that it will take off as people start to embrace technology and things start to come about with it. I like the ability to hand a package off to a client and say here you go, install it on the desktop. No need for browsers or worrying about if it is compatible. I see it going to the mobile phone soon which will be a huge deal. Flex 3 is really the bread and butter and allows you to create great looking applications with hardly any effort. True RAD.

By: David Tucker

David Tucker — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:49:04 +0000

The runtime will begin being widely distributed now that 1.0 is out. Remember that Adobe has been able to have the Flash player reach over 98% penetration on all computers. There are also solid and amazing applications already out there. The NASDAQ is amazing and illustrates how cool the apps can be. Also, fully expect to see Buzzword as an AIR app soon.

By: Leaving The Day Job

Leaving The Day Job — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:41:53 +0000

Installed it this morning. About 75% of the apps I tried failed to run. Those that did run were nothing special, nothing that couldn’t have been done with Flash in a browser window.

Without a killer app and the runtime being widely pre-installed this is going to struggle to take off.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:05:36 +0000

Adobe is the most likely to succeed here. There is a massive installed user base of Flash developers. For those who are experienced in Ajax and Flash it is especially exciting. The types of applications that have been produced already have never been so easy to produce before.

Flash / Air is here to stay.

By: Servaas

Servaas — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:02:17 +0000

I did install it, and was a bit disappointed when I found out that most available apps are for the older version!

By: Lasse Rintakumpu

Lasse Rintakumpu — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:15:03 +0000

This is a hard one. Let me think for a second … No. I don’t.

By: ajaxus

ajaxus — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 07:02:32 +0000

Of course we care, all the web world is waiting on RIA to move the layers. I even blogged about it!

By: Stuart

Stuart — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:33:36 +0000

no.

By: rick gregory

rick gregory — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:13:21 +0000

i installed it for twhirl… nice, but that’s the thing – unless there’s something that drives the adoption of AIR… meh, who cares? I’m going to try the Google Analytics app too, but my first question will be “Why is this better than the Analytics pages in Firefox?”

By: Marshall Kirkpatrick

Marshall Kirkpatrick — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:52:35 +0000

Twitter clients, all the best ones are on AIR, are the only thing I’ve used AIR for so far – but I am super excited to have more functionality available this way. I’d really like to have a little AIR news ticker sitting above all my other apps, for example. I use GMail webclips for subliminal RSS reading all the time and would like a more full-bodied AIR experience of same. There have been a number of apps I’ve wished were in AIR lately, or startups I’ve seen working on them. MindMeister’s Gears implementation is fantastic for travel, though there are some syncing issues.

I think there’s lots of potential here.