Flash® Builder™ 4 and Flex® 4 Bible

Chapter 31. Deploying Desktop Applications with Adobe AIR

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding Adobe AIR

• Creating desktop application projects with Flash Builder 4

• Using the application descriptor file

• Packaging an AIR application for deployment

• Debugging AIR applications with Flash Builder 4

• Incorporating HTML and PDF documents

• Creating RPC channels at runtime

Adobe's release of Flex 3 in February 2008 was tightly integrated with the release of Adobe AIR. Formerly known as the Adobe Integrated Runtime (and before that by its public code name, Apollo), AIR is Adobe's strategy for offering a universal runtime client that can run local applications on a variety of personal computer systems and other computing devices.

With AIR 1.0, Adobe delivered the capability to deploy applications on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux client systems. With the release of Flash CS5 Professional, Adobe is extending support for AIR to the Apple iPhone. The roadmap for AIR includes future versions for other cell phones and mobile devices, which eventually would allow AIR desktop applications to be deployed on a more truly universal basis.

AIR applications can be built from many different kinds of assets, but each application's core asset is made up of either Flash-based content, built in either Flash Professional (starting with Flash CS3) or Flex, or HTML-based content. Regardless of which kind of asset is used as the application's core element, any AIR application can use and present HTML, Flash, Flex, or Acrobat PDF content. ...