During the Flash Camp Keynote in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch mentioned that AIR reached over 200 million installs. We've gotten some questions from developers about that number, so this is a quick post to confirm that as of June 1, 2009, AIR has been installed on over 200 million desktop computers worldwide.

With 100 million installs in the first 10 months of availability, and 200 million in just 16 months the rate of adoption continues to accelerate as more applications are developed and come to market.

The Acrobat.com application built by Adobe and provided with Adobe Reader continues to be one of the most popular applications. Many of the early adopters like TweetDeck and eBay Desktop continue to be broadly used and we're seeing many new applications that are gaining popularity including:

• BBC iPlayer Downloader ( available in the UK only)
• New York Times Reader
• Time 100 Application

In addition to those large brands, we're excited by the smaller companies that are achieving incredible reach with their applications. Seesmic Desktop now says they are getting about 10,000 downloads a day driven by their integration with Facebook and Twitter.

It's also exciting to see enterprises widely adopting Adobe AIR. So far, these applications aren't driving as many installs of the runtime as the media and social applications, but they are helping to confirm the reach the Flash Platform has established in the enterprise. We've recently talked about the improved integration with Salesforce, seen Oracle using Adobe AIR to deliver CRM widgets , and discovered that SAP xCelsius provides support for AIR. We're also starting to see ISVs deliver applications to the enterprise on Adobe AIR:

• Socialtext Desktop
• Demandbase Streams
• Yammer Desktop
• FedEx Desktop

And finally, for folks who have asked how AIR is gaining traction in the government, I want to share one of my favorite apps. The Finance Ministry in Poland built an AIR application to assist their citizens in filing their income taxes.

Justin Bishop, an engineer at Facebook, announced on the official Facebook blog that a new Adobe AIR powered desktop application is available called Facebook Desktop for Adobe AIR. Though there have been many Adobe AIR applications that hook into Facebook, we're really excited to see the release of an application from Facebook to showcase their new Facebook Open Stream API technology. Check out the blog post for additional details!

Today, we are pleased to announce with Aptana that the next major update to the Adobe AIR Development Plug-In for Aptana Studio is now available for download. Joelle Lam, an Aptana engineer that worked on the project, has recorded a video overview (see above) and also authored an excellent overview article describing the new JavaScript debugging capabilities.

The full list of features in the plug-in include:

• Support for Adobe AIR 1.5. (new)
• Integrated JavaScript Debugger. Watch screencast. (new)
• Bundled JavaScript frameworks with full code assist (new)
• Tools for generating application badges (new)
• Integrated content assist for the Adobe AIR SDK
• Pre-installed Adobe AIR runtime and SDK
• Project wizard generates all necessary files for out-of-the box launching of Adobe AIR applications
• Export wizard bundles and deploys Adobe AIR applications
• Easily import Ajax libraries into Adobe AIR projects
• Create and manage certificates for signing Adobe AIR applications
• Support for localization, menu builders, and source viewing
• Adobe AIR samples that can be previewed or imported as project
• Help and online documentation

As we've been speaking to JavaScript developers, one of the most requested features has been the ability to debug their applications. While we exposed this capability in Adobe AIR 1.5 released in November of last year and Aptana announced a beta plugin that supports this, today's announcement is particularly exciting because the final version of this plugin is now available to users and includes many bug fixes and enhancements. Debugging support includes the ability to step in, step over, and step out of code. Errors are displayed in the Console.

Related links:

• Adobe AIR Developer Center Article: Debugging JavaScript code in Adobe AIR with Aptana Studio
• Download Aptana Studio
• Download Adobe AIR Plug-in for Aptana Studio

Today we released Adobe AIR 1.5.1, a relatively minor update that includes a number of bug fixes. The new builds are available for Windows, Mac and Linux on the Adobe AIR download center.

Oliver Goldman, a member of the AIR engineering team, posted a blog entry titled "Using InvokeEvent.reason in AIR 1.5.1" that describes a new API that was also added. If you have built an AIR application that launches at startup, you may want to check out Oliver's overview of how this feature works.

You do not need to recompile your application to take advantage of the 1.5.1 improvements. However, if you want to take advantage of the new APIs introduced in this release you will need to update your application descriptor to 1.5.1 (see New APIs section of the release notes) and recompile your application.

If you have any feedback about the release, please feel free to leave a comment below. Currently, our blog is configured so that comments must be first approved, but we do our best to approve comments as quickly as possible. We hope to change this soon once we can better tune our spam filtering system.

Related links:

• Adobe AIR 1.5.1 Developer and User Release Notes
• Adobe AIR 1.5.1 Documentation
• Download the Adobe AIR SDK
• How to overlay AIR SDK for use with Flex SDK
• Adobe AIR 1.5.1 Known Issues and Limitations
• Adobe AIR Forums

Today, an updated version of the Adobe AIR Marketplace launched that includes an improved look-and-feel as well as a few new features. The goal of the release is to provide a more user friendly destination for showcasing and downloading AIR applications.

New features include:

• Enhanced feedback support where users can rate, review, comment and flag an application to provide feedback to the developer. In addition, users can share applications with colleagues and friends and also subscribe to RSS feeds from the Marketplace.
• A new self-service web interface that allows developers to manage their profile and applications. Developers can also view download statistics, ratings and reviews through a new application dashboard.
• The ability for a developer to specify a link to purchase the application. While the Marketplace does not enable e-commerce transactions directly, users can click on a link to purchase an application from the the developer's website.

Please be sure to check it out and let us know what you think by leaving a comment. Also, please let us know what you would like to see in the future.

Today at Adobe MAX in Japan, we shared some great news about the expanding reach of the Flash Platform. We announced that Adobe AIR has been installed over 100 million times. Also, as of December, Flash Player 10 was installed on 55% of computers worldwide. Flash Player 10 is breaking all previous records for rate of adoption for Flash Player, and we expect greater than 80% penetration by the second quarter of 2009. The Milward Brown survey has details on the methodology used to determine the Flash Player penetration.

Adobe AIR is not included in the Milward Brown data yet, so I thought it might be helpful to explain our methodology. The number we announced is the count of successful initial installations of Adobe AIR -- this provides a minimum for the total install base of the AIR runtime.

What do we mean by "successful installation?"

Software installation can fail during download and also at installation time, so we only consider an installation to be successful when it can be confirmed by code running after the installation has been completed.

For example, the majority of AIR runtime installations occur at the time the first AIR application is installed by a user -- usually through the use of an "install badge" using AIR's seamless install feature. An install badge detects whether the runtime is installed on a user's system before attempting to install the application. If the runtime is not installed, it will be downloaded and installed before the application is installed. In most cases, a user usually launches the app once the installation process has been completed. Once the application is launched, the AIR runtime checks on start-up to see whether a new version of the runtime is available. This request confirms that the runtime was installed correctly and that an application has been launched.

One thing the number of successful installs does not tell us is where are all the installs are coming from. Some are coming from people who come to Adobe.com to download the runtime, but the vast majority are being driven by great, popular applications. Some of the most popular include:

• Adobe Media Player
• AOL Top 100
• eBay Desktop
• TweetDeck
• Twirhl

Are there others? We'd love to know about it. If you don't mind sharing -- put a link to your application below and let us know how many people have installed it...

Update: We’ve gotten a few requests for more specifics around badge installations, so I did a little more digging into the data. Over 30 million installations have been of applications delivered via AIR badges. That means a lot of people are also downloading applications without using a badge. In some instances the runtime and application are offered separately -- such as Pandora Desktop and finetune. In other cases, the application and runtime are bundled within another application, such as Creative Suite 4, Adobe Reader, or raptr.

We have received a few reports from Linux users having trouble running applications with AIR 1.5. Most of these cases appear related to the fact that the user had previously installed AIR applications using Adobe AIR for Linux beta we made available on Labs (an early release).

In the release notes (.pdf), we mention that you need to reinstall versions of your AIR applications that were installed using the Adobe AIR 1.1 Linux beta. However, we thought we'd try and provide step by step instructions on how to do this and answer a few other questions that we have heard from Linux users.

• Do I need to reinstall all of my AIR applications installed using the AIR 1.1 beta runtime before they will work on Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux?
• Do I need to remove data saved by previous installations of my AIR applications, for them to work with AIR 1.5?
• How do I uninstall my Adobe AIR applications on Linux?
• How do I uninstall the Adobe AIR runtime betas on Linux?
• How do I uninstall AIR 1.5 on Linux?
• How do I uninstall AIR applications installed with AIR 1.5 on Linux?
• Why am I unable to install an AIR application through an install badge on a web page?
• Will AIR run on newer versions of Linux distributions? For example, Adobe AIR's system requirements say Ubunutu 7.10, but I am running 8.10.
• Will AIR run on Linux distributions not listed in your system requirements? For example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

Do I need to reinstall all of my AIR applications installed using the AIR 1.1 beta runtime before they will work on Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux?
Yes. AIR Applications installed using the beta version of Adobe AIR 1.1 for Linux must be reinstalled before they will run on Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux.

Do I need to remove data saved by previous installations of my AIR applications, for them to work with AIR 1.5?
Yes, this data needs to be cleaned up when transitioning to Adobe AIR 1.5. You can do this by removing the folders ".appdata", ".adobe/AIR" and ".macromedia/Flash_Player/www.macromedia.com/bin/air*" from your home directory ($HOME). Do note that this will remove passwords and other saved data stored by AIR applications and will need to be entered again.

How do I uninstall my Adobe AIR applications on Linux?
Adobe AIR applications are installed as a native package (.rpm or .deb) on Linux. To uninstall an AIR application on Linux, use your system's package manager to search for and remove the application that you want to uninstall.

On Ubuntu 7.10:

1. Launch "Synaptic Package Manager" from the "System" menubar (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager)
   
   
   
   
2. Search for the application that you want to uninstall such as "Twhirl" or "TweetDeck"
   
   
   
   
3. Right click on the application in the search results, and click on "Mark for complete removal"

   

4. Click "Apply" to remove the application

On openSUSE 10.3:

1. Launch the system's package manager from the start menu (Computer -> Install Software)
   
   
   
   
2. Search for the application that you want to uninstall such as "Twhirl" or "TweetDeck"
   
3. Remove the checkmark for the application's package in the search results
   
   
   
   
4. Click the "Accept" button to remove the application

On Fedora 8:

1. Launch the system's package manager from the Start menu (Applications -> Add/Remove Software)
   
   
   
   
2. Search for the application that you want to uninstall under the "Search" tab such as "Twhirl" or "TweetDeck"
3. Remove the checkmark for the application's package in the search results
   
   
   
   
4. Click the "Apply" button to remove the application

How do I uninstall the Adobe AIR runtime betas on Linux?

Adobe AIR is installed as an .rpm or .deb depending on your particular system. To uninstall the runtime that was previously installed, search using your package manager (as described above) for "Adobe" or "adobe" and remove all of the packages AdobeAIR_enu", "adobeair_enu", "adobeair1.0-enu" or "adobeair-enu" from your system. Also remove the "adobe-certs" package from your system.

If you prefer using a terminal command line, you could do the following:

On Ubuntu 7.10 (.deb):

1. dpkg -l | grep "adobe"
2. sudo dpkg -r <AIR and adobe-certs package names found from previous command>

On openSUSE 10.3 (.rpm):

1. rpm -qa | grep -i "adobe"
2. sudo rpm -e <AIR and adobe-certs package names found from previous command>

On Fedora 8 (.rpm):

1. rpm -qa | grep -i "adobe"
2. sudo rpm -e <AIR and adobe-certs package names found from previous command>

How do I uninstall AIR 1.5 on Linux?

The easiest way to uninstall AIR from your system is through the "Adobe AIR Uninstaller" menuitem under Applications/Accessories.

Alternatively, you could search for and remove the package "adobeair1.0" from the system (using the system's package manager (e.g. Synaptic on Ubuntu)). If you prefer using a terminal command line, you could do the following:

On Ubuntu 7.10:

• sudo dpkg -r adobeair1.0

On openSUSE 10.3:

• sudo rpm -e adobeair1.0

On Fedora 8:

• sudo rpm -e adobeair1.0

How do I uninstall AIR applications installed with AIR 1.5 on Linux?
Uninstall AIR applications exactly the way you would uninstall other applications on your system. The procedure is the same as outlined at the beginning of this post.

Why am I unable to install an AIR application through an install badge on a web page?
You will need to get the latest version of the Flash Player (10.0.15.3) to install AIR applications through an install badge.

• Download the latest version from the Flash Player download page.

Will AIR run on newer versions of Linux distributions? For example, Adobe AIR's system requirements say Ubunutu 7.10, but I am running 8.10.
While we have not tested fully against newer versions of these distributions, we believe AIR should run fine in most cases. If you run into an issue, please send us a bug description using our feedback form and we will look into addressing it in a future version. For a list of our supported Linux distributions, please see our System Requirements page.

Will AIR run on Linux distributions not listed in your system requirements? For example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
Although we focused testing AIR against Fedora 8, Ubuntu 7.10, and openSUSE 10.3, it's likely that AIR will run on other Linux distributions as well. For more information on the libraries required by AIR, see the Packages required to run Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux technote. For a list of our supported Linux distributions, please see our System Requirements page.

A month ago, at our MAX conference in San Francisco, Adobe announced the immediate availability of the Adobe AIR 1.5 runtime and SDK for Mac and Windows. However, since the beginning of the AIR project when the AIR runtime was originally known by its code name Apollo, it has been our intention to bring the runtime and SDK to the Linux community as well. Earlier this year we posted a public beta on Adobe Labs and collected feedback from thousands of users on forums, blogs, Twitter posts, and our team's feedback form.

Today, we are very pleased to announce the availability of AIR 1.5 for Linux. Thousands of AIR applications such as Twhirl (a popular Twitter client), AOL's Top 100 Videos, and Parleys.com, are now available to millions of Linux users. This announcement also means that web developers can now use the AIR SDK to create a single desktop application that works on Linux, Mac, and Windows without any changes.

• Download Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux
• Download Adobe AIR 1.5 SDK for Linux

Important note: In order to take advantage of the badge install feature of AIR, you will need to update to the latest version of the Flash Player for Linux (10.0.15.3).

Update: We made a follow-up post that answers a few frequently asked questions related to Adobe AIR for Linux including how to resolve an installation issue some users are experiencing. .

As Linux users are well aware, Linux is available in many different distributions. We decided to focus on three open distributions: Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE based on feedback from the community. Please be sure to visit our updated system requirements page for additional information about the versions of distributions we are supporting.

Many of us here at Adobe are Linux fanatics and our commitment to the Linux community is stronger than ever. Adobe is a member of the Linux Foundation and collaborates with other members of the foundation to help improve Linux. In the past couple of months, at a product level, the Flash Player team not only simultaneously shipped Flash Player 10 on Mac, Windows, and Linux, but they also made an alpha version of Flash Player 10 available for 64-bit Linux distributions on Adobe Labs. Since the Flash Player is included inside of the AIR runtime, AIR 1.5 does natively not support 64-bit Linux distributions at this time. If you are interested in seeing AIR for Linux support 64-bit distributions, I'd like to encourage you to participate in the Player 10 64-bit prerelease forums and send a note to our team if you would like to see this support in AIR.

We've also posted a new tech notes describing how to run Adobe AIR on a 64-bit Linux operating system:

• Install Adobe AIR Linux 1.5 on 64-bit Linux distribution

Our team would like to welcome your feedback on AIR 1.5. If you believe you are encountering a bug, please be sure to review the release notes (.pdf) and the user forums. If there is a specific bug or feature request that you would like to let us know about, please drop us a note by filling out the feedback form on our website. Thank you to the community of Linux developers and users that made this possible!

One of the best things about attending Adobe MAX is that you get to see some of the technology experiments that Adobe is conducting. The sneaks this year included a really cool new project called Durango that is now available on Adobe Labs. Durango is a framework that allows developers to build AIR applications that can be customized by end users. It allows developers, designers and end-users to easily mashup independent components to create new applications or extend existing Durango-enable applications.

Developers need to download the Durango SDK in order to use the Durango framework. The SDK also includes several sample applications . Durango enabled applications are delivered as AIR (.air) files which end users install. These applications incorporate the Durango framework. The team is requesting your feedback on this Labs release to as they continue to develop the features and capabilities of Durango.

For more details, please visit the Durango page and review the FAQ on Adobe Labs.

Paul Colton of Aptana announced JavaScript debugging support for Adobe AIR 1.5 applications using the new Adobe AIR Development Plug-in for Aptana Studio (beta). Our team has been working closely with the Aptana team to help bring this feature to life by exposing new debugging interfaces from the AIR 1.5 runtime.

Improved support for debugging has been one of the most popular feature requests from JavaScript developers building AIR applications since our initial release (this capability already exists in Flex Builder for Flex developers using ActionScript). With the AIR beta plug-in for Aptana, developers can now set breakpoints and step through code with insights to variables, functions, return values and more. We are thrilled to be able to share this news with Aptana.

This is a beta release and the Aptana team is looking for feedback from the community. A screencast is available that provides an overview of the new functionality. As part of the announcement, Paul wrote:

That's why today we're pleased to announce a huge step forward in the ease of creating Ajax and HTML apps for Adobe AIR: Today's release of the Adobe AIR Development Plug-in for Aptana Studio (beta) features, you guessed it — JavaScript debugging for Adobe AIR apps along with support for Adobe AIR 1.5 which Adobe announced earlier this week.

We previewed the JavaScript debugger for Adobe AIR apps yesterday to a group at Adobe MAX in San Francisco and got applauded for providing this critical utility to the AIR community. Like with other debugging environments you’re familiar with, just click to set a break point in the gutter, then step through, into and out of lines of code while viewing variables and introspecting objects.

Note that the JavaScript debugging interfaces added to AIR are not specific to Aptana and can be integrated into other tools as well. Also, another valuable tool for lightweight debugging of AIR applications is the AIR HTML Introspector included in the frameworks directory of the Adobe AIR SDK. By including a single .js file in your JavaScript-based AIR application, it is possible to introspect DOM properties and functions, edit attributes and text nodes for DOM elements, view XMLHttpRequest objects and their properties and more. It does not, however, allow you to set break points and step through code like the Aptana plug-in described above. To learn more about the AIR HTML Introspector, please view the Debugging with the AIR HTML Introspector in the Adobe AIR documentation.

Related links:

• Aptana's Adobe AIR plug-in page with installation instructions
• A screencast that demonstrates the debugging capabilities within Aptana Studio

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Adobe AIR 1.5. New capabilities include:

• Flash Player 10 capabilities: Adobe Flash Player 10 is one of the most significant releases of the player, with groundbreaking new capabilities. We've updated the version of Flash Player included with AIR to version 10. For example, it's now possible to take advantage of custom filters, blend modes, and fills with Adobe Pixel Bender. AIR 1.5 also supports the new 3D effects, including perspective, correct transformation, and animation of 2D plans in a 3D space. Rich media enhancements include dynamic streaming to improve the quality of video playback based on bandwidth availability as well as support for the Speex codec for delivering high-quality audio at lower download speeds.
• WebKit update: The version of WebKit included in AIR has been updated to a newer version. The updated version includes Squirrelfish, a new bytecode interpreter that improves the execution speed of JavaScript for common actions. Our internal tests show that HTML-based AIR applications run as much as 35% faster for many types of operations. We have also added support for interactive debuggin fo Ajax-based AIR applications.
• Encrypted local database: By popular request from developers, we've added a way of encrypting the local database inside of AIR. This uses standard SQL apis, so there's no need for developers to learn specific crypto APIs. Be sure to check out the Quick Start application by Paul Robertson.

If you are a developer building AIR applications, new versions of the Adobe AIR and Flex SDK's are now available.

• Adobe AIR 1.5 SDK
• Flex 3.2 SDK
• The Adobe Flash CS4 Professional , Flex Builder 3, and Dreamweaver CS3/CS4 also provide support for AIR 1.5.

New articles available on the Adobe AIR Developer Center:

• Using the Adobe AIR update framework -
• BlackBookSafe: Anatomy of an AIR 1.5 application - learn how to take advantage of Flash Player 10's Pixel Bender effects directly from an HTML/Ajax powered AIR application.

There are also several new Quick Start applications:

• Using the Adobe AIR update framework
• Distributing Adobe AIR applications via the Web
• Playing sound in AIR applications
• Working with the encrypted local SQLite database

New and updated sample applications with source code that are available:

• BlackBookSafe - BlackBookSafe is an HTML/JavaScript contact list sample application built on Adobe AIR 1.5. The application uses the JQuery framework and the AS3CoreLib library, and leverages three new AIR 1.5 features: Pixel Bender effects, 3D transformations, and the encrypted local database.
• Salesbuilder - Salesbuilder is a Sales Force Automation application written in Flex and deployed on the Adobe AIR runtime. It demonstrates local persistence using the encrypted, embedded SQLite database, data synchronization, native drag-and-drop support, and direct chart manipulation.
• Apprise - Apprise is an RSS reader that works online and offline. It features automatic categorization by author and topic, OPML import and export of feeds, real-time search, site view and check mark support, advanced sorting, and support for RSS and ATOM. The user interface has been localized into 11 languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.
• 3D Image Browser - This sample application provides search capability for the Flickr website combined with a 3D layout to provide a more interesting way to browse the images. It also has a tag cloud that allows you to find related images. This application uses the new AIR 1.5 3D transformations on a transparent background.

In addition, we're also putting the final touches on Adobe AIR 1.5 for Linux so stay tuned for additional announcements.

Greetings and welcome to the Adobe AIR development team blog. My name is Rob Christensen and I'm a product manager on Adobe AIR. The purpose of this blog is to share thoughts, tips, and announcement related to Adobe AIR. In the coming months, you can expect to see posts from a variety of people on our development team.

First, I'd like to take a moment and say thank you to Jay Allen of Endevver for putting together the design for our team blog.

Second, Rich Tretola announced the O'Reilly contest winners for the Adobe AIR Cook-off contest. Congratulations to Greg Jastrab, Jeff Tapper, and Jamie Kosoy for winning the contest. If you are not familiar with the Adobe AIR cookbook, it's a valuable resource for discovering and sharing code recipes for common development challenges.

• Grand Prize Winner - Migrating Serialization Changes in AIR by Greg Jastrab
• Second Prize Winner - Caching Images to disk after first time they are loaded by Jeff Tapper
• Third Prize Winner - "Are you sure you want to quit?" A prompt before the end. by Jamie Kosoy

Third, our annual Adobe MAX conference takes place in San Francisco this year from November 16th-19th and a limited number of tickets are currently available. Members of our team will be involved in a number of ways from presenting sessions to meeting with customers at our booth. MAX is not only a great way to connect with other developers and designers, it's also a unique way to learn about the direction Adobe will be moving its products in the coming year. MAX is also coming to Milan, Italy, and Tokyo, Japan, in December and January as well. I will be presenting a session at MAX in Milan on monetizing Adobe AIR applications.

Fourth, please be sure and check out our Adobe AIR for Linux Beta and let us know what you think.

Our team is very much looking forward to engaging with the community more closely through this blog. Please be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed and feel free to send us a note by providing feedback to our team through our feedback form. This form is also a great place to send us bugs and feature requests. If you have questions about an AIR application you're working on, the best place to go is the Adobe AIR forums.

Rob Christensen

Product Manager, Adobe AIR