Something Groovy in the AIR

With the announcement of Version 1.0 of their AIR platform Adobe is taking a bold step towards bringing structure to a development space that’s been chaotic for some time now. While Java, Javascript, Flash and Ajax have been around for a while, none of the major players have taken it upon themselves to serve the needs of the immense but disconnected universe of developers currently sweating over “Internet-with-a-thick-client” applications that are flourishing out there in the Windows and, oh, MAC world. Just because the European Parliament has finished suing Microsoft and Al Gore has finished making the Internet ubiquitous does not mean we have all bases covered when it comes to developing Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), the moniker now applied to these gadgets, widgets, services, applications and appliances that have a little bit of desktop, a little bit of internet, and a lot of rich, yummy-looking interface.

Enter Adobe, Stage Left, with Adobe AIR, a trick new platform that works across operating systems, delivers stunning graphics and interactivity, and doesn’t require a small Indian city to code and sustain even the simplest app. One could argue that Adobe is doing as much as Mr. Gore to save the planet, given the number of hours of sheer toil the AIR platform removes from the software development cycle.

That said, we here at Content Circles were a little underwhelmed with the whole AIR announcement. We were looking forward to code-offs, mega-tours and sizzling fireworks; instead we saw a simple press release and a toned-down media event. Sure, Salesforce, FedEx, eBay, Nickelodeon, Nasdaq, AOL and The New York Times Company were there, showcasing their applications running on AIR. But we still think it deserves more - this may be the biggest announcement out of Adobe, or any of the major players this year folks! Thankfully Adobe evangelists are busy working on OnAIR Tour Europe 2008, a major multi-city tour beginning in Madrid on March 31^st and wrapping up in Milan on June 13^th. This is good stuff. We’ll take one of those for the US of A please.

But enough whining. We love AIR. We’ll be hitting the streets with our beta product in a few weeks, and it’s all AIR baby. Meaning, we now write our code once, wrap it in an installer for Mac and another installer for Windows and called it a day. That’s a gross over-simplification, but AIR does enable us to concurrently develop for both OS’s, which is a core benefit of our product – allowing distributed teams on disparate platforms to easily collaborate and share documents. With AIR we can make some tweaks to the UI or back end, quickly compile it, and immediately test the results on both platforms without wondering if everything got checked into BOTH forks of the code tree. Result? Realtime development and testing with far fewer headaches and people. Which is, like, all Groovy with us. No pun intended (or is it?). There’s more to AIR than just faster development however. Did I mention the delicious graphics? But wait, there’s even more! Rather than me paraphrasing, why don’t you go visit Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb who has put together a nice “Top Five” reasons for becoming an AIR head. Can’t disagree with any of them.