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Participant
January 24, 2017
Answered

Adobe AIR 2017 Roadmap

  • January 24, 2017
  • 16 replies
  • 13578 views

In 2016, Chris Campbell reached out to developers through the Starling community to create wishlist for AIR in 2016.  That worked out pretty well.  However, there has no followup this year.

What can we expect from Adobe and the AIR runtime for 2017?  As the landscape continues to change, many of us rely on Adobe's commitment to AIR.

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Correct answer chris.campbell

Hi guys,

We're working on our 2017 and beyond roadmap, using the Starling thread that Daniel created and refreshed this year for inspiration.  I'll post back to the thread with our thoughts, but encourage those that haven't visited to take a look and see if any of the recent suggestions are appealing or provide feedback for items that haven't been posted.

http://forum.starling-framework.org/topic/air-in-2016-survey-and-christmas-tale/page/7

Thanks,

Chris

16 replies

Inspiring
February 6, 2018

Any news on this? Is a roadmap coming?

IGZN
Inspiring
February 7, 2018

AIR 29 Beta is out today, maybe the added features are good sings for us believing it will be kept alive for a while

Inspiring
February 7, 2018

Logically it should only be a matter of years before Adobe pull the plug on AIR but for now they are still doing the job and keeping it up to date. You can't find an online article about cross platform technology that mentions AIR anymore even in footnotes. All the signs that AIR is on its way out are there, none of the signs that AIR is a moving forward technology are there, but some people still have faith in its future, I don't.

Participant
August 4, 2017

What options if any will exist for launching Air from a browser and installing the runtime?  From what I can tell, the mechanisms rely on Flash being available in the browser.

We are looking to move our Flash app to Air but would still like to launch it from our browser page even if it runs outside.

Adobe AIR 1.5 * Installing and running AIR applications from a web page

Colin Holgate
Inspiring
August 4, 2017

I think that article may be aimed at adding a new app to run in a shared runtime. If you make your apps be embedded runtime, it would just need to be a zip or dmg file, and the user would install it like all other apps.

A separate need, which you also asked for (but may not have meant) is the ability to open an already installed application from a link in a web page. That can be done by having the app register custom url handling, and then the web page would invoke that. See this article:

Launching Applications Using Custom Browser Protocols – Shotgun Support

June 6, 2017

Yes Chris, any news in sight?

Inspiring
June 5, 2017

2017 Roodmap?

Known Participant
June 1, 2017

Apparently too much work is required to update and maintain the WebKit or StageWebView or HTMLLoader. Surely that's just bad design, and instead of fixing it properly, Adobe shrugs shoulders and that's the end of the matter.

The Google Maps JS API frozen version is the only version left that works with the version of WebKit included with AIR 25. Using the native StageWebKit or HTMLLoader makes no difference. Google will soon be removing this version (as they do periodically), which will cause our app to immediately cease to work with the Google Maps API.

I doubt Adobe will be upgrading WebKit any time soon or providing their own solution. However, the chaps over at the Apache Flex site suggested I used WebViewANE instead. This is basically an ANE that runs on any OS and incorporates the Chromium Embedded Framework, giving you a fully functional HTML5 loader to replace WebKit, StageWebView and HTMLLoader.

I have tested WebViewANE with the latest experimental version of the Google Maps JS API in an AIR 25 app on Windows 7 and it works flawlessly, as if I'm using my normal browser. Other websites work as well which would otherwise fail to work in AIR's built in HTMLLoader.

Check it out here: GitHub - tuarua/WebViewANE: WebView Adobe Air Native Extension for OSX 10.10+, Windows Desktop, iOS 9.0+ and Android 21+…

I don't know if this has already been suggested but after reading the comments for updates to WebKit in this thread I would assume not. Therefore give this alternative a go.

saglam.mehmet
Participating Frequently
May 24, 2017

We strongly need an embed Pdf viewer class!

Colin Holgate
Inspiring
May 24, 2017

If you need to show PDF in an AIR app, Distriqt and myflashlabs both have an ANE for that. If it's not AIR, but somewhere that you can use StageWebView, you can use that to show PDFs.

saglam.mehmet
Participating Frequently
May 24, 2017

Thanks for the response Colin. I've looked at these extensions already, but they offer an external app to open pdf files. They expect from me to choose one of installed 3rd party app. If i do, i'm outside of the app already...

natural_criticB837
Legend
May 1, 2017

This!

Known Participant
April 27, 2017

1. Linux support for AIR so we can develop application for Linux and support grows of this platforms.

2. Promotion

Inspiring
April 22, 2017

Ya... I can't say I agree that AIR is dead... I do agree 100% that they do a terrible job promoting it's capabilities. But they have been updating fairly regularly.

georgefrankperry
Participating Frequently
April 21, 2017

Adobe AIR is not dead. Some people get so pissy sometimes.

RandomReado​ ... Windows 64 bit was just added as a beta feature in the latest beta SDK....

You will find it under "64 bit AIR 25 SDK & Compiler Beta – Captive apps only (Windows)"

Download Adobe AIR 25 Beta - Adobe Labs

Chris said they are working on the "2017 and beyond" roadmap. So they could be including features planned for 2018+... that is not bad. Go look in the Starling thread and you'll get a better idea of what could be coming. A few of the requested features in that thread have been added already.

I agree that PR is by far the worst part of AIR. But honestly, it felt worse a few years ago... MUCH worse.

Adobe never added Stage3D support to Animate CC which was a big mistake, in my opinion. That could have grown the AIR platform and generated some revenue through Animate CC subscriptions. GAFMedia charges $1000 per year to use their tool professionally. No thanks.

All in all, I'm still very happy with the continued support for AIR. Adding new platforms as they come out (tvOS, Android TV) is a good sign for the future of the platform. Would love to see WatchKit and Android Wear support sometime this year.

Known Participant
April 28, 2017

According to the 64-bit release notes, Adobe has no plans to do a 64-bit runtime and that the runtime on Windows will remain 32-bit only.

KramSurfer2
Inspiring
April 28, 2017

They have a 64 bit run time available now for Windows.  with a packaging caveat that it not use the installed run time.

This is the EXACT issue this thread is talking about.  They don't really announce anything, they just post up stuff and let people find it themselves.  I simply decided to test this when I saw it on the Beta page.

So below is a simple application that creates 1920x1080 bitmaps and adds them to the display list.  200 per press.

In this snap, it has created 3189 bitmaps, 13.3 G's of images, utilizing 9.6G of system memory and paging properly.

GREAT JOB ADOBE TEAM.

https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashruntimes/air/win64SDK/air25_win64SDK_releasenotes.pdf