Professional Adobe® Flex® 3

Chapter 15. Getting Started with AIR

Adobe AIR is a cross-platform runtime that allows applications to be run natively from the desktop of both OS X and Windows without the need for either a web browser or an Internet connection. Developers creating applications with AIR will write their software once and be able to deploy it to Windows, OS X, and Linux without recompiling their code. If developers take care in using the default AIR APIs, their applications will automatically render appropriately in the destination operating environments using native windows, and native operating system functionality, like the Windows Taskbar or OS X's Dock, and allow Flex-based applications to save files to default user documents, folders, and so forth.

While one can develop AIR applications in JavaScript and HTML, or Flash CS3, the focus of this book is on building AIR applications with the Flex framework using Flex Builder 3. It should be noted that like regular Flex applications, Adobe AIR applications can also be built with command-line tools included in the Flex 3 SDK, but the command-line tools are outside the scope of this book.

This chapter will explain what AIR is and how to use it. You'll start by building a simple application. Later in the chapter, advanced AIR configurations will be discussed. And finally, a sample application with a fancy splash screen will be created that highlights some of the modern operating system integration for which Adobe AIR enables development.

What Does AIR ...