Posts in Category "Announcements"

Adobe AIR 2 Beta Now Available!

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Michael Hu | Comments (55)

Today we are very excited to announce the availability of the Adobe AIR 2 beta (runtime and SDK) for Windows, Mac and Linux. At Adobe MAX, we provided you with a preview of Adobe AIR 2 and now you will have a chance to test drive the beta version. AIR 2 builds on the success of AIR 1 by giving developers new capabilities and even tighter integration with the desktop. This is the first time we have sim-shipped for all three major operating systems for both AIR and Flash Player (also in beta) and represents a major step forward in delivering on the promise of the Open Screen Project. In addition, the Flash Player team has also announced the availability of Player 10.1 on Adobe Labs.

Next steps:

  1. Download the Adobe AIR 2 beta runtime and SDK from Adobe Labs
  2. Explore the AIR 2 Release Notes, Developer FAQ and documentation
  3. Download source code and sample applications
  4. Ask questions and provide feedback in the the AIR 2 beta forum

In addition, we are making the following articles available today in the Adobe Developer Center:

Join us today as we start the next step in the evolution of Adobe AIR. On Adobe Labs you will find articles, videos, documentation, and sample applications with code to get you started with AIR 2. The beta forum will also be open to post questions, provide feedback and share your experiences with the beta.

We look forward to your feedback and thanks for your continued support. See you all in the Adobe AIR 2 Beta forum!

Adobe AIR 1.5 Supports Windows 7

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Rob Christensen | Comments (47)

We are pleased to announce that the current version of Adobe AIR (1.5.2) supports Windows 7. For additional information on supported operating systems, please see our Adobe AIR system requirements page.

Only Two Weeks Left Until MAX! Do Not Miss These Sessions!

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Rob Christensen | Comments (8)

Adobe MAX is less than two weeks away and members of our team are working around the clock in preparation for the event. For those of you interested in AIR and learning more about what we have been up to in the past year, please be sure to sign-up for the sessions listed below. All of these sessions will be presented by members of the Adobe AIR team. As a manager for the AIR track at this year’s MAX, I have been deeply impressed by the quality of content this year and I am very much hoping many of you will be able to join us.

A few pointers for MAX this year:

  • If you are interested in learning more about what is coming in AIR 2, do not miss Christian Cantrell’s session on the topic (see session summaries at the bottom of this page).
  • If mobile application development is anywhere on your radar, there are two must-see sessions by AIR team members. Again, session descriptions are listed at the bottom of this post.
    • One session, presented by Arno Gourdol and titled "Designing Applications for Desktops and Mobile Devices with Adobe AIR," will cover how to build applications than span both desktop and mobile. This is an exciting topic and core to Adobe’s multi-screen vision for application development.
    • The second session, presented by Aditya Bansod, is titled "Building Mobile Applications with Adobe AIR" and will focus on mobile application development. The session will cover new ground and there will be two instances of Aditya’s session.
  • Oliver Goldman, lead developer on the AIR team, is presenting a session titled: "Explore Deployment and Distribution Options for Adobe AIR Applications." For those of you looking to better understand the full set of options available to you in terms of deploying your AIR applications and the AIR runtime to end users, this session will provided a detailed look at what is possible today and new options that will be made available in AIR 2.
  • One of the most groundbreaking Adobe AIR applications to date is the popular Times Reader built by the New York Times in collaboration with Adobe. Jeremy Clark, an experience design manager at Adobe, will be presenting on how this application was created from the ideation to production phases. Jeremy’s team led the creation of the application on the Adobe side and he will be sharing his experiences during the design and development process. In reviewing the slides, I expect this session will be a huge source of inspiration for many developers.
  • On Monday night, there will be a "meet the team" session in room 512 where members of the AIR and Flash Player teams will be available to answer your questions. Pizza, beer and other beverages will be provided. This is a great chance to learn more about Adobe’s runtime technologies from the engineers and product managers that work on these products day-to-day. For more information on meet the team events, see the evening events section on the MAX website..
  • If you would like to stop by and say hello, I will be at the platform demo station located in the Adobe booth on Monday (10/5) from 2:00PM – 4:00PM and Wednesday (10/7) from 1:30PM – 3:30PM. Please stop by to introduce yourself and tell me more about what you are working on. If you are not able to catch me, drop me a note on Twitter (@robchristensen) and we can try and meet-up.

Additional Details on AIR Team MAX Sessions

What’s Coming in Adobe AIR 2 by Christian Cantrell

Adobe AIR allows developers to build rich Internet applications (RIAs) that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems. In this session, you will learn about the planned capabilities of the upcoming release of Adobe AIR 2.

Designing Applications for Desktops and Mobile Devices with Adobe AIR by Arno Gourdol

See how Adobe AIR has made it possible for web developers to build cross-platform desktop applications. Learn how the platform is expanding to enable the delivery of applications not just for desktop operating systems, but also for mobile devices.

Building Mobile Applications with Adobe AIR by Aditya Bansod (2 sessions)

Learn how Adobe is working to bring Adobe AIR development out of the desktop and onto a mobile phone near you. We will cover how the AIR SDK and platform will evolve to add capabilities to help developers mobile enable, test, and publish their content. Mobile computing and mobile applications provide publishers and developers with exciting opportunities to get their products into the pockets of millions of people.

Explore Deployment and Distribution Options for Adobe AIR Applications by Oliver Goldman

Learn how to get your AIR applications to your users and how to keep them up to date. We will discuss important considerations for distribution on the Internet or an intranet, including impacts on your auto-update mechanism. We will cover existing deployment options such as badge installation and IBM Tivoli support. Finally, we will explore the new deployment options that will be available in Adobe AIR 2, including the native installer support required to use some of the advanced new AIR 2 APIs.

The Future of Digital Publishing: Delivering News through Adobe AIR by Jeremy Clark

Learn from Jeremy Clark of Adobe’s Experience Design team how his group has leveraged Adobe AIR, Flex, and the Text Layout Framework (now in beta on Adobe Labs) to help the New York Times and others reach new and existing customers with a revolutionary desktop news application.

Adobe AIR 1.5.2 Now Available

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Rob Christensen | Comments (29)

We are pleased to announce that Adobe AIR 1.5.2 is now available for download. Adobe AIR 1.5.2 is a minor update that includes bug fixes related to reliability, compatibility and security. For additional details on changes from the previous release (AIR 1.5.1) including bug fixes, API changes and known issues, please see the Adobe AIR 1.5.2 developer release notes.

In addition, I encourage developers building AIR applications to read the article "Overview of the Flash Player 10.0.32 Security Update" on the Adobe Developer Connection website. This article describes some of the security-related enhancements related to both Flash Player 10.0.32 (also just released) and Adobe AIR 1.5.2.

What are we up to next? We are continuing to work hard on the next major release of Adobe AIR and we’re looking forward to sharing more details including teaser demos soon. If you have feedback on AIR 1.5.2 or in general, please let us know by dropping us a note directly using our feedback form or on the Adobe AIR discussion forum. We greatly appreciate hearing feedback from the community!

Adobe AIR now installed over 200 million times

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Adrian Ludwig | Comments (11)

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:

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:

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.

Check out Facebook Desktop for Adobe AIR

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Rob Christensen | Comments (30)

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!

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Adobe AIR Development Plug-In for Aptana Studio Now Available

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Rob Christensen | Comments (12)

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.

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Screenshot of the new debugging view.

Related links:

Adobe AIR 1.5.1 Released

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Rob Christensen | Comments (13)

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:

Updated AIR Marketplace Launched

Posted on February 10, 2009 by Rob Christensen | Comments (6)

marketplace-new.png

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.

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AIR Passes 100 Million Installs

Posted on January 28, 2009 by Adrian Ludwig | Comments (16)

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.

Update:

Why does Adobe talk about installation numbers?

Our developers regularly ask about installation numbers because they are concerned about how quickly someone can install an application and begin using it. Having the runtime installed ahead of time makes that easier by making the download smaller and the download time faster. This the same reason that we focus on keeping the Flash Player very small, and why new versions are adopted so quickly.

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:

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.