Air is Dead

I completely agree with panther and

https://www.facebook.com/occupyhtml5/posts/10151861946595679?stream_ref=10

the problem of AIR is Adobe.

Because html5 it's cool and flash is not cool (as said Jobs)

Adobe Flash NOT promotes technology, this worries us and makes it difficult to sell.

sorry for the bad English.

Ciao!

this is not nice ...

... samsung note:

Warning

We have been alerted that Adobe will no longer continue to support Flash on Samsung Smart TVs and BluRay players. As a result, Flash engines will not be supported in 2015 Samsung products. Going forward, Flash-related features will be excluded from SDKs released. Although Flash engines will remain to be equipped on existing Samsung products, including 2014 models, there will be no technical support from either Samsung or Adobe. Accordingly, any applications developed with Flash Air or Flash Player will no longer be acceptable. Samsung recommends using either HTML 5 or Javascript based applications if the application in question is Flash-based. Beginning on February 4, 2014, any Flash-based application, including any updated versions of such will not be acceptable for submission.

Pantera, are you a troll?

If anything, the voiciferous responses you've been getting thus far in this thread should clue you in that Flash/Air is very much alive, and well, and for good reasons -- the main one being that it works !

As several people have pointed out, no language or API is ever perfect or complete, but what is surprising to me, is to hear all this negativity coming from some people ( Apple fanbois, typically ), considering that AIR is actually, surprisingly, good!  I have yet to meet a programmer, who having recently turned to AS3/AIR, didn't actually like it.

What you get:

• The syntax is very easy to understand ( unlike, say, Objective-C ).
• It is truly cross-platform: one code base will pretty much work on all major platforms -- with few minor adjustments, if any.  Android + iOS + Desktop ( Facebook ): no problem.
• Want to turn your code into a simple webpage?  Easy.  Porting AS3 to regular Javascript is very straight forward ( cut and paste for the most part ), since AS3 is mostly an enhanced version of JS ( everything JS should have been:  truly object oriented, and strongly typed  ).  Want your flash content to interact with the JS in the page it's contained in?  Easy.  Since it is mostly the same syntax and a lot of the same functions.  BTW, Javascript, as we know, is not going away any time soon!  'HTML5', for ex, is utterly dependent on it.
• It is widely in use:  heard of casual games?  Anything made for Facebook is Flash.  AS3 can and does handle big, multidisciplenary, projects.  There is a whole industry ( or two or three ) that uses and relies on it.
• The API is amazingly deep, due to the years Flash has been around, esp. if you are into graphics.  In many cases, you'd be hard pressed to do any better -- just different, maybe. Granted, occasionally you might need an ANE, but there are many out there, and this usually concerns ancillary stuff, like in-app purchases, or support for some of the more exotic sensors on mobile platforms (ex: gyroscope, compass ).  The point is that even in such cases when the functionality is not provided natively, there is usually one or more ways to make it work, and that's more than one can say of other dev platforms or frameworks.
• AIR updates are still coming at fast rate, though it has slowed down a bit lately ( due to its increasing maturity ), but it is still very much actively being developped.  And it's not just the API ( ex: Adobe Scout ).
• The community is vibrant and very helpful.

Add to this what others have pointed out:  no language or API is ever going to fit all of everyone's needs perfectly.  But with AS3/AIR, I think you stand a better chance than with most environments to find either a solution, or a satisfactory way around the problem -- without sacrificing the ability to target multiple platforms!

Also, it should be clear by now, that making apps, especially for mobile platforms, is not easy:  there is a lot that needs to be taken into account, and it can be frustrating, but that is true in any language or API, and this has more to do with the inherent complexity of apps and the subtelties + fragmentation of mobile platforms ( not a uniquely Android phenomenon, BTW ), than with the languages or APIs themselves.  Naturally, there will always be plenty of (s-)faddists and vested-interests that would have you believe that the grass is greener on the other side.  It's not.  Remember the promess of HTML5?  Many got burned with that one:  let's spend 3 times longer to do the same thing, and in the end, maybe give up because it just doesn't work ( and probably never will ) !

If there is a negative, here it is, as far as I can tell:

It seems to me that the leadership at Adobe has been listening to the wrong voices; failing to realize that Flash/AIR is not just very good, but a major pillar of their enterprise, as well.  Some examples:

• First, there was the pulling of Flash in the browser on Android ( not necessary, since it was already working, and a major argument in favor of Android -- I am not biased )
• Then, there was the ridiculous attempt at putting a paywall on Molehill ( for succesful developpers relying a bit too 'heavily' on it! ).
• Then, support for the high level shading language, PixelBender3D, evaporated, without a word.
• Finally, there was the total cloudification of Creative Suite!

I am sure I am missing a few, but it all amounts to a vision and leadership deficit at Adobe.  It  reminds me of a scene from "The Empire Strikes Back":  instead of 'Imperial troops have entered the base' over the P.A., it's more like 'MBAs have entered the base', and they are starting to tear things apart because they are not engineers/creators and have a myopic view of what constitutes value ( synergy is either too abstract or not immediate enough a concept for most of them, even though that is what generates profits in the long run ), and, not able to recognize true value, they can easily fall pray to hype, including the deceptive propaganda of a would-be competitor.

All this negative stuff is political in my op, and has nothing to do with the merits and viability of the Flash/AIR platform.  Which is why newcomers, in my experience, tend to be surprised when they discover how good AIR is...  because it is.

http://www.beedigital.net/2014/01/09/air-wins-award-at-ces-for-the-best-mobile-application-product-in-2014/

A "dead" product still winning awards? I think you're grasping at straws here Pantera. I'd love to hear how that native development is going lol

Hyperbole and imposed ignorance.  Furian says, "I won't believe it no matter what."  So, what's to talk about?  I like Adobe, I like Actionscript, and I like Air.  It gives me what I need to program what I like.  No other language+product does.

Don't like it, then don't use Adobe.  Like it, then use it.  Want to improve it, then offer constructive criticism or develop free or paid components and solutions. This conversation is old; it started in 2010 with Apple, and has not changed since. 

My views are my own, and may not be shared.  Your views are also your own, and may not be shared.  What is also true is that these views are not objective.  Please talk directly to the programmers and admin at Adobe instead of speculating here.  What good can you possibly do here? 

This will, obviously, be my last response to this post.

Jesus! I am disappointed at myself for having the morbid curiosity to carry on reading this post. But as a child keeps tonguing the painful hole where their tooth used to be, I seem to keep ending up here, drudging through the same old tired arguments.

There are two groups of people here. One group that have successfully used a technology which worked well for the things they were trying to accomplish, and one group that tried to accomplish things with a technology to which those things were not suited.

Funnily enough the ones for whom the technology worked are happy with it, and the ones for whom it didn't are not. Well big f**king surprise.

Guys, this is getting out of control, let's stick to the talk.

I understand your idea to solve the problems and just continue. I've done it numerous times, but this is not the point. The fact that AIR is free is no excuse - if something's wrong with Google - you dare to say you don't like it and ask to fix/change it, right?

We've all used Flash and AIR for a long time, and we all see it's evolution and how things change. But they change slowly, and not in the right direction.

No one can say that they put a lot of efforts on AIR (and in my opinion in Flash and AS). I won't believe it no matter what. And this is the most painful and frustrating thing - this whole AIR idea is doomed - something that is not further developer IS or WILL be soon dead.

Yes, there are workarounds for now, and yes we like it and we still use it, but they don't do it right. They wanted AS4, but dropped it. They try to develop new features, but they do it so slowly and so awkward, that it's just unbelievable. Multi-threading was planned before more than 5 years, right after AS3 was released! And it's made so strange, that I won't believe someone is happy with it. GPU acceleration was a must years ago, and still you are so limited that you cannot even swap Stage3D with StageVideo! And you think this is great?!?

I bet none of you has used Feathers for complex applications! And none of you knows exactly how the Milkman's Facebook extension works, as I've sent numerous e-mails to the support as the documentation does not include all cases (different iOS versions and expired tokens bug in the SDK).

Pantera said it right, and I will repeat myself - if a single guy can make Feathers (one of the fewest frameworks for GPU accelerated UI), and if a small group of guys (or maybe again one?) can make the most powerful collection of native extensions (Distriqt, which are great and I wouldn't be able to release my app without them).. WHY Adobe IS NOT doing it?! They don't want to invest money in 5 people team to develop all that, or what?? You say this is normal and you say this is the best on the market - to pray for third-party obsolete solutions or just make them by ourselves? Nice. If so - yes, AIR will soon be outdated and dead.

And we are still talking about the MOST basic stuff - to make a freaking customized list in Stage3D! Or to put a normal camera to shoot images (Adobe's internal rotates the image depending on OS, WTF?! again - extension). Their GPS is so wrong, that I cannot even explain it (extension maybe?). WHY are they even doing those features if they DO NOT WORK? Oh, alright, we know workarounds (if-else for OS and rotate image, right? it's that simple and I'm stupid). Most common and basic things don't work properly and the documentation is full with "don't use that on iOS", or "works differently on Desktop". But they try to be "innovative" with "new great features, you just need to add few lines to your compiler". Come on guys, uploading bitmap to GPU is so slow, that it's almost a must to do it in the app initialization! What's the current year again?

We won't talk about collision detection for gaming, pathfinding, image processing and all the common things that are needed nowadays. We talk about the most stupid and elementary stuff, and there are still bugs. And things don't change, there are even more bugs.

I'm very sorry to say it, but I think they don't put enough efforts in it and we will be soon developing in other languages.

p.s.

Please cut the crap about "it is free, do not whine". Yeah sure, Adobe doesn't get money from your mobile apps, right? Something good is now getting bad. That's the whole idea, and I don't care if you guys know the best native extension or you have fixed one and used it - this is all non professional as your main goal is to develop apps, not to fix other's crap!

How do you complain about something that is FREE? I never understood why people do that. It is FREE. If you paid your hard earned money for something then go ahead but Adobe AIR is FREE and works consistently across platforms. Yes Adobe screwed up the message and all that and they deserve that criticism but the AIR platform isn't going anywhere, it works.

esDotDev +1

@72Pantera you can't be serious with this post! I understand you can get frustrated when things don't work but your whole argument is irrelevant if you are willing to write your app natively twice in objective-c then in java instead of fixing a small bug in a native ANE. If there even is a bug and its not user error. That would make NO SENSE! C'mon man...

Just because Adobe doesn't provide the exact component you need for your implementation doesn't make Adobe AIR a dead platform. If you want to jump ship and use something else, go right ahead, just don't put this negative energy out there which is misleading to people that are not knowledgable about the platform.

Hi guys,

It's hard, but I must admit that I also think things are going bad, and Pantera is somehow right.

I just did a mobile application with a lot of UI an some hardware usage (camera, GPS, etc.) Honestly, most of the time spent was fighting with those native extensions and their bugs, as well as with Feathers (Starling is just lovely).

I don't understand the idea of bringing such key feature as Stage3D, and not doing a single effort to include core things. I don't understand how such a straight-forward thing as UI components can be outsourced to a SINGLE guy, that everyone needs to take in mind, just because he has his own idea of programming. I could say nothing about Starling as I'm not that deep in it and I don't mind if it's made by Gamue or natively by Adobe.

I get all your points. I also like the idea of cross platform development. But still, there is one problem - you cannot call something 'good' when you spent MOST of your time dealing with third-party problems (I had to make Facebook SSO + Share dialog -> bought three extensions and wrote more than 10 emails for support, as there is almost no documentation). I've registered, read tons of posts and submitted several bugs for Feathers.

How you call this normal development?! Do you know how much time and efforts I had to put only to read and post bugs for something, that could have been done internaly for no time (Flex got all code for components, but Feathers started from scratch).

Another thing that I have to agree with Pantera - I don't see any progress, or it is so small and insignificant. For so many years there are only things put on top of everything, that work with some hacks and are partly supporteed. Workers are so weird I always avoid them. Stage3D has so many restrains that you have to read for a whole week to understand them. You need to know which framework to use, how to use it, what are it's bugs and how to hack them. You must know where to buy native extensions and how to work-around them.

This is not a top edge technology, this is a legacy. I must admit that after this project I'm just looking for something to switch to. And Unity3d (which now has 2d) uses C#, which I think is a true MODERN language with less bugs and more people working on it. AIR is going down as Adobe put so much efforts in HTML5 and JS stuff..

You are making a real mess of the arguments.  These are not complaints about Actionscript (or Flash or Air).  They are complaints about features that any language may or may not have. 

ANE problems are just that -- native problems.  You would not even be thinking cross-platform without Adobe Air.  Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle have actively inhibited Actionscript to reaplace it with proprietary code.  It is praiseworthy that Adobe has actively maintained Actionscript. 

Complaints about proprietary software should not be followed by claims about the value of objective-c.  And the Android Java is not proprietary, but is focused on Google and mobile so it does not translate to the desktop, Nook, Kindle, or Blackberry. 

Java is owned by Oracle.  When it was obtained from Sun, the user agreement was changed so you no longer have control of all of your code.  Java programmers jumped ship, because it *used to be* open source.  C is an impossible language for fast programming without a dozen propreitary tools and code bases.  And all of these have to be compiled for each OS that it is going to work on.  The same as Actionscript.

HTML5 is not cross platform.  Everyone knows this, and no one working with HTML5 will allow the discussion.  It is the emprorer's new clothes.  You yourself are not even planning to write in HTML5. 

The only complaint seems not being able to move/share/access video, which sounds like a huge opportunity.  *If* you can program that functionality cross-platform (and keep it up to date for each new OS iteration and new platform,) then you have something I would pay for (if I had a project that needed it).  You see an impossible obstacle, but you could see your future instead.  Yes, Adobe should address that, but they are doing a stellar job of bringing platforms into Air, so maybe they need to be sold on the true value they are missing.

And I disagree that accessing and sharing video is the most important feature is accessing and sharing video.  To me, it's of small value.  That's what YouTube is for, really.  And Vevo.  And Facetime, and whatever it is on Android.  And now Facebook.  So why is it so vital?  More details about the project would help.

Air/Actionscript is not dead.  You may have reached the limits of it's current range, though.