Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide
Reviewed by Robert Pritchett
Introduction
This book is the official
guide to Adobe ¨ AIR written by members of the AIR team. With Adobe AIR, web
developers can use technologies like HTML and JavaScript to build and deploy
web applications to the desktop. Packed with examples, this book explains how
AIR works and features recipes for performing common runtime tasks.
Part of the Adobe Developer
Library, this concise pocket guide explains:
á
What Adobe AIR is, and the
problems this runtime aims to solve
á
How to set up your
development environment
á
The HTML and JavaScript
environments within AIR
á
How to create your first
AIR application using HTML and JavaScript
á
Ways to perform an array of
common tasks with this runtime
Also included is a guide to AIR
packages, classes, and command line tools. Once you understand the basics of
building HTML and JavaScript-based AIR applications, this book makes an ideal
reference for tackling specific problems. It offers a quick introduction to a
significant new development technology, which lets you combine the reach and
ease of the Web with the power of the desktop.
What I Learned
Do I really want to develop apps for Adobe AIR? S this
technology just a lot of hot "AIR"? It utilizes Adobe Flash and
HTML-based and builds on
JavaScript, but this reads "proprietary" just like Apple does its
Cocoa-based development platform apps and Xcode for Mac OS X. Adobe looks at cross-platform, while
Apple pretends not to. And I already reviewed Adobe Flex.
O'Reilly sent me both the Beta Release version of this book
on Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) (ISBN: 9780596515195) and not too much later,
this book, so I guess they were serious enough to want me to review this stuff.
There are 4 chapters on web apps, AIR technologies, what is
needed to get started with AIR, working with JavaScript and an AIR
mini-cookbook for deployment, windowing, APIs, pickers, server monitoring
networking and sound. There is even an Appendix for AIR JavaScript aliases.
Conclusions
Jump into the Adobe camp with both feet and keep from being
left up in the AIR.
