Adobe Air

What is Adobe Air ?

Adobe AIR is a developer's tool for creating platform-independent web applications that can be run on a user's desktop.

Developers create AIR applications using HTML, AJAX and the AIR software development kit (SDK). Popular AIR applications include desktop clients for microblogging services like Twitter, or desktop RSS readers. AIR code is built using a client-side model, which is useful for desktop applications that request data over a network but execute locally.  


Like Google Gears, Adobe AIR applications allow a user to interact with websites, rich Internet applications (RIAs) and other Web services offline without using a Web browser. Updates are sent automatically when an Internet connection becomes available. AIR stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime. 
Adobe AIR (formerly Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a cross-platform runtime system developed by Adobe Systems for building desktop applications and mobile applications, programmed using Adobe Flash, ActionScript and optionally Apache Flex. The runtime supports installable applications on Windows, OS X and mobile operating systems including Android, iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS. It also originally ran on Linux, but support was discontinued as of version 2.6 in 2011.

Adobe AIR is a runtime environment that allows Adobe Flash content and ActionScript 3.0 coders to construct applications and video games that run outside a web browser, and behave as a native application on supported platforms. An application developed for Flash Player or HTML5 and deployed in a browser does not require installation, while AIR applications require installation from an installer file (Windows and OS X) or the appropriate App Store (iOS and Android). AIR applications have unrestricted access to local storage and file systems, while browser-based applications only have access to individual files selected by users.
Adobe AIR internally uses the Flash Player rendering engine and ActionScript 3.0 as the primary programming language. Flash applications must specifically be built for Adobe AIR to use additional features provided, such as multi-touch, file system integration, native client extensions, integration with Taskbar or Dock, and access to accelerometer and GPS devices.HTML5 applications may run on the WebKit engine included in AIR.

Notable applications built with Adobe AIR include eBay Desktop, Pandora One desktop,TweetDeck, the former Adobe Media Player, Angry Birds, and Machinarium, among other multimedia and task management applications. According to Adobe, over 100,000 unique applications were built on AIR, and over 1 billion installations of the same were logged from users across the world, as of May 2014. Adobe AIR was voted as the Best Mobile Application Development product at the Consumer Electronics Show for two consecutive years (CES 2014 and CES 2015).

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