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chris.campbell
chris.campbell
Legend
July 25, 2017
Question

Locked by Moderator, Not on subject anymore,AIR Roadmap Update

  • July 25, 2017
  • 72 replies
  • 111052 views

Hello AIR developers,

With the news today regarding Flash Player, I'm sure many of you have questions regarding AIR and its future roadmap.  Let me start by saying that today's announcement was not about AIR, and instead focuses entirely on Flash Player and the browser plugin environment.  Adobe remains committed to AIR and we believe it continues to be a great desktop and mobile development platform.

Many of you have asked for a roadmap update.  We hope to have our official Flash Runtime roadmap updated soon, but until then I wanted to share some of the features we'd like to accomplish in our upcoming releases.  As always, this list may change as we receive feedback from the community.

  • Support for 64-bit AIR – Windows Captive Only
  • AIR SDK installer on Windows
  • Desktop async texture upload
  • DirectX11 support for AIR desktop
  • Increase the GPU memory texture limit
  • Improved monitor and resolution settings for AIR Desktop
  • GPU render mode for AIR Desktop
  • Support for the latest SDK on iOS 11 and Android O
  • ASTC Support for mobile
  • VR/AR support for AIR apps
  • ANE support for Swift on iOS
  • METAL bindings for Stage3D
  • Motion detection for Android devices

We've also been following a feature request thread on the Starling forums.  We wanted to get your feedback on some of the items outlined by the community.  If you'd like to provide additional input, please take a minute and take this three question survey so we can better understand what folks would like to see in future releases.

Community AIR Feature Requests​ Survey

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    72 replies

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    J
    joseg24323683
    Participating Frequently
    September 5, 2017

    I find it a bit concerning that this "Roadmap" is announced on a forum informally. I see no plans for anything AIR related at Adobe MAX. What kind of focus is Adobe really putting in the future of Adobe development?

      K
      kennyTru
      Participant
      September 5, 2017

      chris.campbell​, where is the update on the roadmap, concerns of a proper HTML5 output, and why nothing at Adobe MAX?  Can Adobe truly not respond to any of these overwhelming concerns?  Is this forum just an echo chamber for the last survivors hanging around to see if Adobe plans to turn things around?  The end of this year will likely solidify whether ActionScript and AIR have a real future in businesses moving forward for the new year.  Despite saying otherwise, people are already skeptical of AIR continuing.  Leaving AIR out of Adobe MAX continues to perpetuate that its no longer a priority to Adobe.

      B
      Born2code
      Known Participant
      August 30, 2017

      Thank you Chris as always...

      We all look forward to the road map and while I understand you can't give us more info on how many years AIR will be supported, we would still appreciate some sort of future commitment as millions of dollars are still being spent on AIR.

      Personally I can tell you that we LOVE AIR, we appreciate Adobe's support and we feel that AIR's best days are in-front of it, just needs a bit more push with marketing,

      have a GREAT day and keep it up,

      Sean.

      B
      Born2code
      Known Participant
      August 30, 2017

      Hi Chris,

      Any news on when we can expect the AIR road map and X number of years commitments from Adobe to the platform?

      regards and thanks as always,

      Sean.

      chris.campbell
      chris.campbellAuthor
      Legend
      August 30, 2017

      Hi Sean,

      We're still planning on updating the road map, but given the changes since this was originally created we're going to simplify and rewrite much of it.  We also hope to incorporate feedback from the survey results that we've received so far.  It's still on my list to do and others have already started the process internally.

      As for number of years of commitment, I'm afraid I may not be able to help there.  Flash Player was a very special case in my experience, with a specific EOL date and a long 3 1/2 year commitment.  In my 20+ years at Adobe, I can't think of any applications that I've worked on that had that type of public ramp down.  Many of the apps that I've worked on are still going strong (I started with Photoshop 3.0.5), but as with this industry, others have ended as business, market and customer changes dictated.

      That said, we have no plans to shut down AIR at this point and our team is acutely aware of the dependencies that our development customers have on us for support.  We know that many of you are working on applications which you expect to support for multiple years, and you need a runtime that is compatible with the latest OS updates, bug fixes, etc.  We will continue to advocate for you and our priorities remain:  Security, fix critical customer issues, maintain compatibility, improve quality and performance, and add community requested features.

      Thanks,

      Chris

        TeotiGraphix
        TeotiGraphix
        Participating Frequently
        August 30, 2017

        @Chris

        "fix critical customer issues"

        Since AIR is free, what does Adobe consider a "customer of AIR"?

        Since security was listed first which affects all "users", I am curious what the difference is between a user and customer.

        "I can't think of any applications that I've worked on that had that type of public ramp down"

        Well Flex wasn't an application but that affected 1000's of developers without much notice myself included.

        B
        Born2code
        Known Participant
        August 8, 2017

        Does anyone know when we can expect the official road map from Adobe...

        thanks as always,

        Sean.

        Colin Holgate
        Colin Holgate
        Inspiring
        August 8, 2017

        Chris Campbell probably knows.

        In two months there is Adobe MAX, I imagine a lot of effort is going into that for now. It would seem reasonable to have roadmap things ready for that. But, if it's Christmas before we know more, just blame Chris.

          B
          Born2code
          Known Participant
          August 8, 2017

          Great!!! Chris has been great so I am sure they are working on something...

          Fingers crossed!

          tx again,

          Sean

          J
          joseg24323683
          Participating Frequently
          August 8, 2017

          Does this mean that there is still potential for ASNext aka AS4?

          A
          ASWC
          Inspiring
          August 9, 2017

          I really don't see how this could ever happen at least as long as Adobe is in charge of that technology.

          TeotiGraphix
          TeotiGraphix
          Participating Frequently
          August 9, 2017

          Adobe seems to can things when the cool kids aren't playing with them any more, so maybe when seamless multi-platform development goes out of style Adobe will donate AIR to Apache.

          Y
          yufuair
          Known Participant
          August 8, 2017

          Hi Chris,

          Is Adobe going to keep updating Animate CC? We use Animate CC to build and publish AIR for iOS (iPad & iPhone) and Android apps, and will need to have Animate CC to be up-to-date and great.

          Also, is there a plan to fix the StageWebView so it can load and display local HTML5 files?

          This is good to know that AIR for iOS and Android will live and be improved in the future. This is a good platform to create apps.

          Please advise. Thank you much.

          E
          eduardo12fox
          Inspiring
          August 3, 2017

          Guys, take a moment. Adobe does not want to know about us programmers or our opnions, they let the Flash Player die and the flash builder together with Flex, until today there is nothing compared to flex technology, and make no mistake, flexJs is still crawling for the next 5 years will not yet be stable. As for AIR or defend this technology because Adobe does not bet anything on AIR and soon will die together with Flash Plauyer can be sure. I am migrating all the applications I have already canceled my Adobe signature and asked for my employees to do the same. I never again advocate for ADOBE-branded products that she did with the programmers who studied and believed in the technology was compared to Hittler.

          Die Adobe!

          A
          ASWC
          Inspiring
          August 4, 2017

          Comparison to Hitler is really out of line and pure craziness but I would agree the lack of vision on Adobe's part is just stunning. Since they bought Macromedia every single major decision they took for Flash and Apollo made me think "you got to be kidding me ...", there's just never been a time where I thought "good move Adobe, well done". Their move (300M investment) to make Flash tech a major OS base on mobile was just plain stupid and simply marked the beginning of the end for Flash. When this failed (it took them 3 years to realize it) they pulled 90% resource from the platform and started to let it die. What's really stunning is why so many people still can't see that and still think "yeah Adobe's gonna do the right thing with AIR, no way they'll let it die like Flash".

          Another stunning example, the Sound API (the worst Sound API ever made) starting with FP9, instantly turned Flash into the worst platform for sound related development. They could have fixed it then but no, they didn't put the money down to do that and just let it go. If you ever wonder why it's the worst Sound API in history run basic latency test and compare the results with ANY other technology and I mean ANY, at best Flash/AIR is 50ms behind.

            Z
            zwetan_uk
            Inspiring
            August 4, 2017

            ASWC  wrote

            Comparison to Hitler is really out of line and pure craziness but I would agree the lack of vision on Adobe's part is just stunning. Since they bought Macromedia every single major decision they took for Flash and Apollo made me think "you got to be kidding me ...", there's just never been a time where I thought "good move Adobe, well done". Their move (300M investment) to make Flash tech a major OS base on mobile was just plain stupid and simply marked the beginning of the end for Flash. When this failed (it took them 3 years to realize it) they pulled 90% resource from the platform and started to let it die. What's really stunning is why so many people still can't see that and still think "yeah Adobe's gonna do the right thing with AIR, no way they'll let it die like Flash".

            I don't think Adobe had any lack of vision when they planed for AIR.

            Not only they completely changed the direction of the early beta project Gemini,

            but right from the start they released both Flash Player v9.0 and AIR v1.0 back in 2006.

            So yeah, their vision was to know already 10 years ago that the Flash tech had to dissociate itself from the browserand that's why they came with the concept of Out Of Browser experience that is Adobe AIR.

            If you can not call that a "good move" you got shit for brains.

            ASWC  wrote

            Another stunning example, the Sound API (the worst Sound API ever made) starting with FP9, instantly turned Flash into the worst platform for sound related development. They could have fixed it then but no, they didn't put the money down to do that and just let it go. If you ever wonder why it's the worst Sound API in history run basic latency test and compare the results with ANY other technology and I mean ANY, at best Flash/AIR is 50ms behind.

            All that depends on your definition of "good".

            The great thing about the Flash Sound API is you can build a mp3 sound player in 1h top,

            so sure you may not have the precision of an audio mixing studio but it was good enough

            for startup like SoundCloud to get started right away.

            Compare that to the Browser API for sound and there you can find the worst sound API ever,because you can not build a basic sound player without going through a lot of shit,
            audio tag is a joke, Web Audio API is a shit show.

            Not everyone need to be a sound engineer to just play some sound ...

            I mean seriously dude just look at this

            Introduction to Web Audio API

            that's an "introduction" not an advanced tutorial, it's ridiculous.

            I personally don't care about 50ms latency, but I do care about an API easy to use.

            TeotiGraphix
            TeotiGraphix
            Participating Frequently
            August 3, 2017

            Cross compilers are nothing new and well, I had that dream back in 2011/2012 I wrote the cross compiler that Apache Flex is using right now in FlexJS, FalconJX.

            See the thing is, with me, the AS3 language is not evolving. I spent over 1000 hours on that code base and unit tests in Java. Why? Because Adobe screwed devs(Novemebr 2011), go read my bio on Apache Flex's site, "I am writing the compiler to put the last nail in the Flash Player". Something along those lines.

            So what I am saying is, if I had a wish it would be to get new language features.

            Ah yes, but there is a catch, see Adobe wasn't stupid when they trashed Flex, they forked the compilers when they donated Falcon. So now, you have two projects that support AS3 but can never have parity with each other.

            So on one hand you have AIR and it's compiler, then you have Apache with it's Falcon/FalconJX compiler.

            Now with the nail, the one nasty factor is byte code. Since AIR is still using Flash runtime, any real push from Apache Flex is stomped on because we cannot add features or adjust byte code for AIR.

            I still use AIR and have a popular drum machine on Android, I love it but the fact I could not donate all my compiler experience to push AS3 into the future sucks bad. (why I am not active in the project right now)

            A
            ASWC
            Inspiring
            August 4, 2017

            AS3 is pretty good but AS NEXT was going to be awesome ... Adobe pulled the plug on that too.

              TeotiGraphix
              TeotiGraphix
              Participating Frequently
              August 4, 2017

              Agreed, I was on that boat the whole time.

              The fact is, AS3 is just grammar with an AST tree. That AST tree represents the whole language. It can be manipulated any way and extended.

              The Falcon compiler had such a great multi-threaded architecture that could easily be extended to add new language features.

              As I said, Adobe put the last nail in AS3, Flash Player and AIR when they gave Apache half of the project. What good is a compiler when AIR uses the ASC2 compiler that is closed source?

              It's a joke, and once I took my rose colored glasses off and realized Adobe was doing it as a marketing thing for there "love of the community"(the donation), I had to realize that no matter what talent the OS community had to extend a compiler for the ActionScript language, as long as Adobe has the keys to the AIR compiler, it's futile to dream of any future.

                J
                Joseph_Saade
                Inspiring
                August 2, 2017

                I have a cloud license and develop on animate or FB4.7.

                I have worked on a lot of mobile and desktop projects and I can say one thing, AIR, in general, has an identity crisis.

                I am not sure if it is targetted towards apps or games. Both seem half baked, missing the last touches. Everytime I have an app, I feel I have to recreate the UI and test everything on every device to make sure simple stuff like text renders fine.

                And when I have a game, I usually use starling but lose the flexibility if Animate.

                I can list a lot of half baked features example remote notification support on iOS only (?)

                In all it is an old and mature platform, so some minor issues that should work out of the box and do not are always weird.

                From my point of view, having AIR as open source would solve all these compatibility and weird issues and enable me as a developer to fix minor bugs without relying too much on the weird bugbase and blackbox.

                tkcbk57594040
                tkcbk57594040
                Participant
                July 31, 2017

                I like Flash, I like ActionScript, and I like AIR.

                I hope Adobe continues to support him because he's a great technology.

                It is web HTML, Flash Player is a great plugin, but I hope it has always been there, until one day HTML in all aspects beyond Flash Player (but I think this is very rare, the development of HTML itself is contrary to the original definition for HTML).

                TKCB

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