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Adobe AIR 2 Preview

Anish Kumar — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:00:33 +0000

At Adobe MAX in Los Angeles today, Adobe previewed the next major release of Adobe AIR to thousands of Adobe customers and partners. Several exciting new capabilities of the AIR runtime were demonstrated by Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch, as part of the “day one” keynote. In addition, Christian Cantrell, a member of the AIR engineering team, presented a session titled “What’s Coming in AIR 2″ that provided a more detailed sneak peak of some of the upcoming features of the AIR runtime (stay tuned — we will soon be posting a recording of Christian’s talk).

After shipping AIR 1.0, many of developers challenged Adobe to open the runtime up even more by, for example, allowing communication with native processes and providing enhanced networking support. With AIR 2, Adobe’s goal from the outset was to remove limitations in the runtime that prevented developers from building their applications.

Some of the capabilities that are coming in AIR 2 include:

Native process API
Beginning with AIR 2, developers will have access to a native process API that will enable applications to invoke and communicate with native applications on the local machine. In order to preserve the cross platform nature of the .air file format, applications that take advantage of the native process API must be deployed as native installers such as .exe and .dmg. The AIR runtime SDK will include support for generating basic native installers.
Support for detecting mass storage devices
Now your AIR application can detect when a mass storage device is connected or disconnected. An AIR 2 application can listen for when a user plugs in a Flip video camera or USB Flash drive so that it can, for example, automatically synchronize files to the local system or prompt the user to upload photos to Facebook or videos to YouTube.
Improved support for accessibility
Runtime dialogs such as the installer dialogs will be readable by supported screen readers such as JAWS. In addition, it will be possible to build accessible Flash-based applications in AIR leveraging the existing accessibility API’s and features available in the Flash Player and Flex SDK.
Open document API
Support for opening a document will be possible from an AIR application. With this API, AIR asks the operating system what the default application is associated with the file. For example, specifying a file path to a PDF file will launch Adobe Reader or a .doc file will open Microsoft Word.
Improved performance
Applications that run using AIR 2 will consume less memory and use less CPU than AIR 1.5 without recompiling the application. We will share more information about this when we launch the beta.
Local microphone access API
Currently, audio must first pass through a server before it can be saved locally. Using the upcoming AIR 2 local microphone API, it will be possible to record audio locally, which can be important if your application is running in a disconnected mode.
Multi-touch & gesture support
AIR 2 will include support for multi-touch (Windows 7) and gestures (Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6).
Faster, more powerful WebKit
An updated version of WebKit that includes a faster JavaScript engine and new HTML5/CSS3 capabilities will be included inside of AIR 2.
Improved socket support
It will now be possible to create local servers and lightweight P2P applications with enhancements to AIR’s socket support.

In the coming weeks leading up to the beta, we will begin sharing more information including videos, articles and blog posts about some of these new capabilities. We are extremely eager to get the public beta into your hands so that we can begin incorporating your feedback.

Adobe expects to ship a beta version of Adobe AIR 2 on Adobe Labs by the end of the year. In the first half of 2010, Adobe expects to ship the final version of AIR 2.

Flash Lite 3.1 On HTC Hero Android Mobile

Anish Kumar — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:27:10 +0000

HTC will be the first mobile company to bring Adobe Flash Player Lite to the Android Open Source Mobile platform with the release of its new Hero mobile device. The HTC Hero phone will come with Flash Lite 3.1, which means it’ll be able to cope with anything written with ActionScript 2.0 and thus be very well equipped for interactive content as well as streaming online video and audio. Checkout a demo video here:-

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/articles/htchero.html

Adobe Flash support to TVs soon..!

Anish Kumar — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 06:58:43 +0000

The television, whether we like it or not, will continue to evolve into a delivery mechanism for more than just an antenna, cable connection, or satellite television. Adobe wants to Flash to become the standard on many sections of the home entertainment category. This includes televisions, DVD players, and game consoles.

Adobe Flash

Adobe’s Flash Lite software would enable all these devices to become equipped with the capability to run Adobe’s Flash software to enable forthcoming interactive television in a way that far outstrips what is available today from cable and satellite providers. Multiple high-definition streams overlaid on your television and multiple ways to interact with that information (weblink? purchasing? research?) would be available.

With this move, internet connected TV will be able to play back videos and offer Web-like interactivity. Adobe GM, VP platform business unit David Wadhwani says, “Adobe Flash Platform for the Digital Home will dramatically change the way we view content on televisions. Consumers are looking to access Flash technology-based videos, applications, services and other rich web content across screens. We are looking forward to working with partners to create these new experiences and deliver content consistently across devices whether consumers view it on their desktop, mobile phone or television.”