Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook
by Rich Tretola, David Tucker, Marco Casario, Koen DeWeggheleire, Koen De Weggheleire
Chapter 1. AIR Basics
AIR is a runtime that can be installed on computers that are running Windows, Mac, or Linux (at the time of writing, Linux support is currently in beta).
After installing AIR (free from http://get.adobe.com/air/), users can install and run AIR applications, which are packaged as files with the extension .air. What this means to you, the developer, is that you can deploy a single .air file to any operating system that has AIR installed without making any changes—one of the greatest benefits of AIR. You can truly write code once and then deploy your application across multiple operating systems.
AIR provides multiple development pathways for you to create AIR applications. The free Adobe AIR software development kit (SDK) contains command-line tools and code templates for creating an AIR application and is downloadable from http://www.adobe.com/products/air/. With the AIR SDK, you can create Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)/JavaScript AIR applications or create an application with a precompiled Flash or Flex SWF file. In addition, Adobe provides integrated support for developing AIR applications in Adobe Flash, Flex, and Dreamweaver. A few other development environments also provide support for developing AIR applications including Aptana Studio, which provides comprehensive support for developing JavaScript AIR applications.
Although multiple development pathways exist for an AIR application, the following core concepts span each of these environments:
Each application ...