Today is a good day, and will likely mean a sleepless week for most as we read over the release version of the AIR API documentation. This could be a real turning point in the proliferation of web technologies into viable technology solutions for the desktop environment.
You can read the press releases here:
Adobe Technology Platform for RIAs Propels Innovation on the Web
Leading Companies Deliver RIAs on Adobe AIR
To commemorate this “new era” I’ve collected together, what will hopefully prove to be, really useful links to get you all going with AIR. So without further ado let’s get on to the links and start making fantastic desktop apps!
First up we have the AIR installers themselves, this covers off both the SDKs and the actual runtime.
Next up is the tools section. Now, obviously there will be a fair amount of Adobe kit in here. However the compilers / SDKs are free so I’ve included some additional 3rd party tools that may be worth having a look at if you’re confident in just using a plain old text editor and the commandline.
- Flex Builder 3 (officially released today also – see my previous post)
- Flash CS3*
- Dreamweaver CS3*
- Aptana (A superb eclipse based Ajax editor with AIR support – which works beautifully as part of a Flex Builder integration workflow for AIR)
- TextMate (The text editor of choice on OS X)
- UltraEdit (One of the best text editors on Windows)
* To take advantage of Flash and Dreamweaver as development environments for AIR you’ll need to download and install the extensions for each specific application to add AIR support. These should be linked off of the AIR homepage on Adobe.com.
No developer list would be complete without some “brain food” aka resources and links. So here they are. We have pretty much everything here including links to developer blogs that have cool examples (and source); as well as official links to relevant areas on the Adobe site and of course, links to developers who have AIR based applications for you to download and use.
Resources, Samples, Source and more…
Adobe AIR Marketplace (A good place to download applications and add-ons)
Kevin Hoyt’s HTML / Ajax Air examples (these are the Beta 3 examples, but they should still work until Kevin updates to v1.0)
Lee Brimelow’s experiments in AIR (Some nice examples of NativeWindow among other things)
Apollo and AIR examples from Mike Chambers (nice drag ‘n’ drop example. Note that some of these may need updating for v1.0)
Christian Cantrell’s Apollo / AIR examples (Not only does Christian have some handy tips and tricks, but he also has some nice app samples and quite a few worthwhile AS3 libs to make AIR development easier)
Peter Ent (Like progressive development of Pete’s Atmosphere Music Player)
Sean the Flash (Flex) Guy’s super simple SQLite example (AIR Beta 1, but should work OK with minor tweaks)
Sean also has a series starting about 6 AIR APIs (File System Access, Network Detection, Notifications, Application Update, Drag and Drop, Local Database)
Christophe Coenraets’s very cool SQLite Admin Application (Source included)
And Christophe’s equally cool SalesBuilder (As with the SQLite Admin app, source is included with this too)
Cool AIR Apps
Next up we have AIR applications that are worth having a look at to give you inspiration and, perhaps provide some insight in to what you could achieve.
The official Adobe AIR Showcase ebay Desktop (Originally called Project San Dimas this is one of the most impressive AIR application so far)
Google Analytics (Vim, Nico and the guys over at Boulevart have done a superb job with this application – one of my personal favourites!)
AOL Music 100 Video Widget (This one is pretty cool – although the mini state looks a bit awkward on a Mac, but would look fine on Windows).
Agile Agenda (Very nice project planning tool – Winner of the Adobe AIR Derby)
Snippage (nice concept)
And finally…
6 AIR Applications you must see (This is a bit old now but still worth a quick review)
Allurent Labs Desktop Connect (no downloadable app, but a video overview worth a quick look.)
Acesis Point-of-Care (Innovative take on patient detail / data capture. Nice looking UI too
Well that should do for starters, as I find more interesting articles and samples I’ll add them to the list.
