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Adobe AIR provides a way for companies to deploy RIAs to the desktop, creating a closer connection with their customers. With Adobe AIR, your branded application migrates from being a destination that a customer accesses through a web browser, to becoming a connection that provides direct and controlled interactions with your clients.
Adobe AIR allows consumers to experience the web in a new way, allowing them to have their favorite web applications with them at all times. Applications are available anytime and anywhere - on the desktop, over the web, on any platform, and eventually, on any device.
Adobe AIR allows application designers to break free from the browser and have 100 per cent control over their application’s appearance, while still ensuring that it will work seamlessly and look the same on all platforms and operating systems.
Adobe AIR plays a critical role in bringing back the familiar and very functional desktop features that application developers lost when they moved to the web. When applications were truly desktop-based, clients could interact with their desktop and could work in a way that was very familiar for them. Adobe AIR brings back functionalities like copy and paste, drag and drop, task manager interaction and desktop notifications.
Adobe AIR allows executives, project managers, marketers and other visionaries to think “outside the box” in many ways when designing their client interactions. First and foremost, this means that an application can become more than a simple bookmark that is one click away from competitors. Applications can break free from the square, boxy format of the web browser and can take on any shape, transparency, and format that the application designer desires. This allows full-blown applications to appear on the desktop in novelty shapes, similar in format to widgets. If, for example, you are deploying an application that tracks progress for a fundraising campaign, you can build this in the form factor of a barometer that sits on the desktop and shows a real-time status of your donations.
Thinking outside the box also means that the application designer is not restricted by the security limitations of the browser. With traditional web applications, it’s impossible to interact with files or folders on the local system. The security for all applications is policed by the web browser, preventing even valid requests from trusted applications from getting through. With Adobe AIR, applications run with the same user privileges as native applications. This means that applications can have broad access to operating system capabilities such as reading and writing files, starting other applications, drawing to the screen, and communicating with the network.
Adobe AIR also supports local notifications, allowing application designers to finally push data out to users in a reliable and controlled way, opening up new opportunities for engagement. With web applications, the only way to push information out to clients was though an email notification. This method was generally reliable but not very efficient, as the client needed to check his/her email, login to a web application and then respond. With Adobe AIR, it is now possible to trigger a desktop notification. This means that clients can set-up requests for information they want, and be immediately notified of its availability. Companies can set-up notifications to inform clients of new products or stock replenishments, or to trigger collaboration between multiple parties. Adobe AIR changes the delivery of information and allows organization to push-out data to clients in a real-time, collaborative model.
For developers, Adobe AIR is an efficient development path as it allows programmers to build truly multi-platform applications using the web programming skills that they already possess. Developers accustomed to building web applications with HTML, AJAX, Flash and Flex, can easily transition their applications to the desktop, without learning the languages and processes that are typically required for desktop application development.
Adobe AIR creates certain economies of scale for web applications as it allows developers to build an application once and then deploy it over the web, to the desktop and eventually, to additional platforms, like mobile devices. The same base elements are used and the same coding tools are leveraged.
Even though Adobe AIR was only recently released, there are a number of applications available today that already use this technology.
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