Nate on Tech

Adobe’s coming to Minneapolis for a short 1-day conference all about AIR, the new desktop runtime for Flex apps (previously codenamed Apollo). It’s happening the evening of Thursday, September 27. Free information, beer, caffeine and snacks.

More info is online: http://onair.adobe.com/schedule/cities/minneapolis.php Click on the registration link next to the photo of the venue. (You know you want to… though I got a server error the first 4 times I tried to submit. Fifth time’s the charm I always say!)

Well Adobe has finally released Apollo for developer preview, as an Alpha release. I, for one, will be starting to play with desktop apps using this Flex-based ActionScript3 engine ASAP. From a platform standpoint, deploying Apollo applications seems to be similar in structure to desktop Java applications. You need a platform-dependent runtime-library, but on top of that runs your platform-independent applications. Then you package your application as an AIR file (like a JAR or WAR file) and make available for the users/consumers.

Features such as allowing for sometimes-connected data and local storage, a rich UI library, web browser “display object” (meaning it can be manipulated as a movieclip could be), and a very easy to develop in model that separates the UI structure from the code - all mean Apollo will bring about a ton of very cool desktop-connected applications.

Further reading: my Adobe Max notes on Apollo features, Apollo on Slashdot, and Adobe’s wiki entry on Apollo

Looks like Adobe is getting ready to release the official beta of Apollo this month. Dave and I got a great preview of some Apollo features at Max last year. It will be good to see desktop derivatives of the more popular online services popping up soon. (sooner than later, I hope!) And - don’t forget about the mashups! I’m sure the local flash/flex community will be all over this new platform. (Check out my notes from the Max Apollo session)

Day 1. Session 5. Ethan Malasky and Brent Rosenquist discuss the upcoming Apollo platform, and how we can build cross-platform desktop applications using Flex. Applications can be installed via a seamless browser install, or directly from an AIR package.

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