Participant

Question

Adobe AIR support for Windows RT and USB

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
November 5, 2012
3 replies
3689 views

We want to develop an cross platform application. We found that Adobe AIR supports cross platform development for Windows, iOS and Android.

We wanted to know wheather

1) reading and writing to USB port is possible with Adobe AIR?

2) Adobe AIR has support for Windows RT development?

Thanks in advance.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Z

Zhenya1919

Known Participant

No, WinRT is not supported. And we're not aware of plans to support it. Also, developing non game cross platform apps with Adobe AIR comes with pretty big trade offs. So I would think twice.

Douglas McCarroll

Inspiring

Zhenya1919 wrote

> developing non game cross platform apps with Adobe AIR comes with pretty big trade offs. So I would think twice.

I'd love to hear more about what people think on this subject.

I'm in the process of creating a non-trivial non-game mobile app with Flex/AIR. While there are clearly tradeoffs, I'm still feeling that I'm way ahead of where I'd be if I was developing separate Android and iPhone apps. Windows phone support would be nice, but isn't crucial at this point.

Developing native apps on multiple platforms is a great approach if you're Facebook, with a huge budget...

The main other options that I'm seeing for cross-platform app development are:

Xamarin
Appcelerator
Sencha Touch
PhoneGap
Am I missing any good options?

All of these options except Xamarin are based on JavaScript/HTML5. I have the impression that these may not be as performant as AIR (which offers close to native app performance).

I'm also extremely hesitant to go with a solution that uses an untyped language and doesn't have all the compile-time error-checking that this allows. I hear that Sencha - to some degree or another - somehow adds this to JavaScript - or simulates it with their IDE ? ...

But, mainly, I just haven't found time to seriously explore these other options. If you've tried them, what do you think of them? When would you choose them over AIR, or vice-versa?

Thanks,

Douglas

Z

Zhenya1919

Known Participant

I wrote before about my concerns with Adobe AIR, but here is a short summary:

- no road map and no clear plans for the platform,

- support of new devices is often late, Intel chipsets are not supported on Android,

- debugging on a device is a pain,

- inadequate build times for iOS, app package is quite large,

- list of mobile UI components is very limited and UI experience is far from native,

- native extensions are a possibility but still far from perfect (imagine using three very different development platforms all in one app), no debugging,

- performance is not good if you use a lot of Spark components in your app,

- Flash Builder is pretty bad as the development environment,

- ActionScript3 is a poor, outdated language that encourages bad coding practices.

I ruled out HTML5 frameworks for the same reason as you stated above. Last few months I've been working with Xamarin MonoTouch and I think it is perfect for my projects. 100% native UI experience, about 80% of the code is shared among the platforms, iOS, MacOSX, Android and Windows 8/RT are supported. Took me about 2 months to convert my 2Mb ActionScript Adobe AIR project to Xamarin MonoTouch (iOS). The entire process was fun and painless. Now thinking to port to MacOSX and Android. My iOS app is already at the App Store, no major complains so far.

On a down side, Xamarin is expensive for an indie developer with low revenues. You need to pay $300 per year per each platform (iOS, Android, Mac). Plus, you need to develop UI layer separately for each platform, so only part of the code is shared. But I decided it is a way to go for my projects and it's been a very positive experience so far.

As for my professional development, Xamarin offers quite a bit more as well. I get to work with C#, .NET, iOS SDK, Android SDK all in one platform. With Adobe tools you only get to know ActionScript and Flex/Spark framework. Very rarely I see that as a desired qualification. It is like a trap. Your boss tells you to develop a few projects with Adobe tools, it sucks you in for a few years and suddenly you realize that your market value declined dramatically and there is no easy way out of this mess.

K

kemsky

Participating Frequently

http://code.google.com/p/air-hid-usb/

G

Gaius Coffey

Legend

Not sure, but wouldn't the Windows RT be the same as selecting "Signed AIR package for installation on desktop" or is the Windows phone RT significantly out of whack with desktop OS?

G

C

ChristopherTotty

Inspiring

Windows RT is compiled to run on the ARM platform (not x86). This means we would need to see a pretty major change in Flash Pro/Builder to support Windows RT as a target for Air builds.

As far as USB support goes, I am not familiar with what bare hardware is available to AIR in a windows environment. However, if it is not available through AIR, you can always develop a Native Extension that supports your needs. Many people don't realize that Native Extensions are not just for mobile devices, but can give new features to desktop apps as well.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/native-extensions-for-air.html

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