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How to Test AIR 1.5

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
November 4, 2008
36 replies
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Sorry if this seems slightly off center, but I blame Adobe, not myself. Trying to determine the true status and positioning of AIR amongst the various Flex forums and projects for an outsider is practically impossible. So, I will be brief. In September Mr. Chambers sent opened the flow by telling us that we could find FP10 integrated with Flex SDK in something you call 1.5 or Cosmo, or both. He was properly circumspect, so I didn't rush into it -- there was not even an ADL binary when I checked. Now it is November, the Trunk is at 4005, and ostensibly, everything we need to start trying to take advantage of FP support of 3D operations is out there. But where? Where do we get a version of AIR 1.5 that can be installed on a target desktop, so that we can try to run the ADT test cycle?

Call it Gumbo, call it Flex4, call it whatever, but can someone tell us how to start testing it for AIR application deployment?

Thank you.

Developers

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tcorbetAuthor

Known Participant

Matt says that on his page he has an option to add an attachment, but that does not appear on mine, so here is Select All, Copy, Paste out of the PDF document:

=========================================================================
AIR Modularization One Point of View
Background/Preface
I have been seeking an answer to just one limited question from a myriad of questions that could fall under the heading of AIR Modularization. Now Alex Harui has replied with some suggestions and has asked for some input concerning a broader set of issues that need to be considered. My intention, in this document, is just to respond to Alexs suggestions within my original, limited scope. I do hope that others will address the broader issues, and I dont minimize them in any sense. But, at the end of the day, I am most comfortable in speaking to the matters that have arisen from my own attempts to develop a workable modularization scheme.
The Basic Architecture of the Application
When the application is launched the user sees a simple screen that is divided vertically between a left and a right side. The left side displays the functionality of the application in the form of a Menu Tree. The right side uses the TabNavigator control for providing the stack of Functional Features. We previously developed most of the functional capabilities using the Java SWT toolkit, and had essentially the same layout and the same controls.
So, that is just to say, that we think this general presentation is clear and open-ended in ways that make it relatively easy to engineer an ever-growing set of Functional Features. Examples of Functional Features are a JukeBox, a Shared White Board, a Content Management System, a Sudoku Game and 3D Books with interactive content. Those are what we consider modules. They are virtually independent sub-applications that might otherwise just be run as fully-separate applications in separate invocations in their own Operating System windows. Of course, we dont want to offer them as separate applications running in separate windows; we want to coordinate things through a common infrastructure, and common look-and-feel.
The degree of independence of these types of modules is such that it is usually possible for the engineer to go off and perform most of the development and test as stand-alone code in order to maximize test turn-arounds. Unit testing and even some integration testing can take place without having to bring the whole main application up and down all the time. I think there is nothing very unique about our approach, so I am certain that many other developers work in a similar environment. [That is not to imply that there are not other approaches that may have rather different characteristics and requirements.]
AIRness
So, as described to this point, we can achieve most of what we want to achieve just with the Flex api, and, indeed, that is basically how we prototype new Functional Features. But there are compelling capabilities that are only available by moving up to the AIR api.
With more and more folks having wide screens or dual monitors, it is natural to want to break out of the constraints of rectangular Panels obscuring each other in a stack.
Now you might argue that just using AIR for more interesting windows is not a very deep investment in all that AIR has to offer, and that wont hurt my feelings. Of course we also take advantage of many other AIR-only capabilities, but admittedly the driving force is more interesting visual experiences, and stating that may help you understand why there are many other considerations in the topic of AIR Modularization, on which we do not concentrate. Again, that is not to indicate that we are unappreciative of the larger issues, but it is to emphasize what we believe, which is that the functional capability we are seeking ought to be made available immediately rather than waiting until AIR matures or the whole picture can be understood.
Provisioning and Version Management
Rather than answering questions about whether our application runs entirely or primarily off-line we think it is more helpful to describe our requirement for network access in terms of the way the software gets to the desktop. Whether a new Functional Feature ends up being designed and built in such a way that the user can take full advantage of it on-line or off-line is a continuously-changing thing. If today, an inventory of our sub-applications happened to show that 80% of them could be used off-line, the on-line requirement for the remaining 20% would still be there. In short, at least for our business model, we would never be interested in shipping entirely off-line applications, so network traffic will always have to be well managed.
Given that, it seems to be more helpful to look at network activity in the context of getting the Functional Features to the desktop from a server. In other words, even though we are devoted to AIRness, from the standpoint of software downloading, we look at lot more like what I think you expect for Flex.
Yes, the user should normally start-up our application from his desktop, and he ought to be able to succeed in doing that even when he has no Internet access. He ought always to be able to use the Functional Features that can be used off-line. That said, if the user wants the latest and greatest we expect him to start up with an Internet connection. So, our startup sequence looks like this:
A.
Read a VersionManifest from the Application Directory.
B.
On a module-by-module basis compare the Version in the Version Manifest with the Currently Installed Version List that is stored in the Application Storage Directory. If the VersionManifest says there is newer code available, download it.
So, as you can tell by reading-between-the-lines our process for pushing out an update does not involve pushing out the new code. We just push the new VersionManifest, the code will be fetched later. That gives us lots of flexibility in terms of different configurations of our application at each customer site. While a test/release cycle will
likely update many modules, not all users may need, or even have access to all modules. Moreover, if all we need to update is a small amount of code in only one Functional Feature, we can easily do that without holding up the whole release cycle for some sort of magic integrated everything. Our modularization allows more responsiveness to the customer and to the competition.
So, are we concerned about bandwidth? Yes we are. Its not that we are looking to save a couple of megabytes every time any user runs anything, its that we are looking to save a couple of megabytes every test/release cycle. And that is probably the main point of all of this. Whether it is because we are dumb, or because we are clever, the frequency of test/release cycles is NOT anything like once in a while, it is more like every two weeks for production. For rapid prototyping, and maybe premature bug-fixing, lets face it, our needs are often something like every night! [Not to mention the fact that it is important to have geographically-disbursed development centers if you are larger and more successful than we are and so saving a couple of megabytes of data traffic to refresh a remote development/test location is something that might easily occur several times an hour.]
Please may we use Dynamically-Linked, Cached Frameworks
For now, thats all we are asking. You already have engines I am not sure whether all the logic is in the Flash Player, or whether the AIR runtime just shares some source code from the Player build stream in its own stream, but wherever it lives, it already knows how to recognize when a swf file needs to be linked to a .swz file. In the Flex case, the engine knows where to look for the necessary .swz file, and so should it quite as easily know where to look in the AIR case. It is, as far as I can tell, just a ma

_Darrell_Loverin_

Participating Frequently

<div class=Section1> color:#1F497D'>Since <a href="http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-18202">http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-18202</a> does not fix the problem you are seeing please write another bug and post a link to the bug back to this forum. Thanks.<o:p></o:p> color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p> <div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'> From:<span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Terry Corbet [mailto:member@adobeforums.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 6:16 PM To: flexsdk-dev@adobeforums.com Subject: Re: How to Test AIR 1.5<o:p></o:p> </div> <o:p> </o:p> A new message was posted by Terry Corbet in Developers -- How to Test AIR 1.5 Darrell, Thanks for monitoring this thread and for your suggestion. I know that this is not the forum for bug reporting, so I will wrap this thread up and follow up over there. This thread was started in the hopes of getting a clear, positive white paper to deal with the disconnect between discussions of 'modularization' in an AIR/Flex application as contrasted with just a plain old Flex application, and maybe there is now enough interest that someone will consider doing that. <o:p></o:p> <div class=MsoNormal> <hr size=2 width=200 style='width:150.0pt' align=left> </div> View/reply at <a href="http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b6ed86/17">How to Test AIR 1.5</a> Replies by email are OK. Use the <a href="http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?280@@.59b6ed86!folder=.3c060fa3">unsubscribe</a> form to cancel your email subscription.<o:p></o:p> </div>

matt_chotin

Inspiring

If you navigate to http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/?13@252.FNGBiqbl0V9@.59b6ed86 I think you can reply to the message and post an attachment (in my web view I see an attachment option underneath the message). Try it out, it's possible that I disabled attachments though so we'll see :-) Matt On 11/28/08 3:33 AM, "Terry Corbet" <member@adobeforums.com> wrote: A new message was posted by Terry Corbet in Developers -- How to Test AIR 1.5 OK, I have created a PDF file with thoughts that anyone is welcome to shoot down. I hope Matt or Alex or someone will tell me how to put the document somewhere. ________________________________ View/reply at How to Test AIR 1.5 <a href=http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b6ed86/22> Replies by email are OK. Use the unsubscribe <a href=http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?280@@.59b6ed86!folder=.3c060fa3> form to cancel your email subscription.

tcorbetAuthor

Known Participant

OK, I have created a PDF file with thoughts that anyone is welcome to shoot down. I hope Matt or Alex or someone will tell me how to put the document somewhere.

ChivertonT

Inspiring

On Wednesday 26 Nov 2008, Terry Corbet wrote:
> does require Internet access for some functionality as well as for the
> important steps of initial provisioning and periodic update.

I'm fairly sure the runtime and applications will install on a machine with no
internet connection...

> -- my user's can 'blow into the microphone' to perturb the on-going actions
> of a simulation that uses the Actionscript Physics Engine [APE]. To do
> that, my code must successfully exchange packets with an Adobe server that
> is keeping track of the user's security.

You mean for the 'allow this site to access my microphone and camera' screen ?

> dependency -- for nice support of framework version management -- causes
> any problem.

The Player must be able to fall back to locally hosted versions, as now,
however.

--
Tom Chiverton
Helping to assertively establish holistic interfaces

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_Alex_Harui_

Participating Frequently

<div class=Section1> color:#1F497D'>If your thoughts are publically consumable, I would encourage posting them (or some of them) on this forum. Then we’d get feedback from others on your thoughts as well. Otherwise, let’s wait for Matt to return from his turkey/crabchip fiesta and he’ll probably gather your thoughts off-list.<o:p></o:p> color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p> color:#1F497D'>Me, I don’t have as many years in the business but I’m no spring chicken either. Some of the new college grads we hire have parents my age.<o:p></o:p> color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p> <div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'> From:<span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Terry Corbet [mailto:member@adobeforums.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 5:06 PM To: flexsdk-dev@adobeforums.com Subject: Re: How to Test AIR 1.5<o:p></o:p> </div> <o:p> </o:p> A new message was posted by Terry Corbet in Developers -- How to Test AIR 1.5 Alex, A very welcome, thoughtful post. I would be very happy to provide my thoughts as to what I think would be the answers to your questions. Please let me know via what forum I can offer my 2cents. The little rectangular boxes I find at some sites that seem like they would represent a place for such input to be provided, are not very helpful. Can I just send a PDF file to you somewhere? To end on a gleeful note heading into that turkey dinner, maybe this ought to be revealed about the author. When I started getting paid to write code, IBM basically had two jobs in a branch office -- systems engineer or salesman. [Don't google it, unless you are willing to try terms like 'autocoder' and '302 Accounting Machine plug-board'.] I loved the systems engineering role, but they paid better if you could sell something, so I had to go on quota and take over some accounts. One of my accounts was 7-Up, so I scheduled a 'get-to-know-you' lunch for them. We ! talked a bit before the waiter came to take our orders -- as host, I was last. When the waiter asked, "And what to drink?", I reflexively said "I'll have a Coke." You might guess that I didn't sell much at 7-Up that year. But, as you can see, coming up on my 5th decade, I've learned some things. I had thought I would just ask where I could send you a .doc file! <o:p></o:p> <div class=MsoNormal> <hr size=2 width=200 style='width:150.0pt' align=left> </div> View/reply at <a href="http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b6ed86/19">How to Test AIR 1.5</a> Replies by email are OK. Use the <a href="http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?280@@.59b6ed86!folder=.3c060fa3">unsubscribe</a> form to cancel your email subscription.<o:p></o:p> </div>

tcorbetAuthor

Known Participant

Alex,

A very welcome, thoughtful post. I would be very happy to provide my thoughts as to what I think would be the answers to your questions. Please let me know via what forum I can offer my 2cents. The little rectangular boxes I find at some sites that seem like they would represent a place for such input to be provided, are not very helpful. Can I just send a PDF file to you somewhere?

To end on a gleeful note heading into that turkey dinner, maybe this ought to be revealed about the author. When I started getting paid to write code, IBM basically had two jobs in a branch office -- systems engineer or salesman. [Don't google it, unless you are willing to try terms like 'autocoder' and '302 Accounting Machine plug-board'.] I loved the systems engineering role, but they paid better if you could sell something, so I had to go on quota and take over some accounts.

One of my accounts was 7-Up, so I scheduled a 'get-to-know-you' lunch for them. We talked a bit before the waiter came to take our orders -- as host, I was last. When the waiter asked, "And what to drink?", I reflexively said "I'll have a Coke."

You might guess that I didn't sell much at 7-Up that year. But, as you can see, coming up on my 5th decade, I've learned some things. I had thought I would just ask where I could send you a .doc file!

_Alex_Harui_

Participating Frequently

<div class=Section1> color:#1F497D'>Darrell’s suggestion will be the “official” answer until 3.3 or whatever it ends up being ships.<o:p></o:p> color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p> color:#1F497D'>Per your other point, IMHO it is too early for a white paper. AIR is too new to want to put a stake in the ground on the right way to modularize AIR apps. Because it is new, its security model is pretty conservative and actually gets in the way of some of these modularization strategies. It will be through feedback from folks like you who have a vision of a particular application configuration that will help us prioritize and shape the security model and modularization techniques going forward.<o:p></o:p> color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p> color:#1F497D'>Right now, any attempt to have an AIR application load any kind of code modules from the internet runs into one wall or another. You cannot currently trust that code from the internet enough to allow it access to desktop features that differentiate AIR from Flash. Folks workaround it by using loadBytes, but I certainly wouldn’t publish that as the recommended technique. Instead, we want to feedback on such things as what kind of authentication you’d be willing to go through to trust that code, how important is it to you that said code have access to desktop features, what other levels of integration is a must-have between those modules of code. In the Marshall Plan, we discuss how modules are not the same as sub-applications and serve different purposes. What purposes are you trying to solve with code from the internet? Does your AIR application have online/offline capabilities and how do you plan to handle unavailability of the network? Would you prefer to bring code down and install and only update it when necessary instead of pulling it from the internet each time you start it up? Or are you willing to pay the delayed startup time of always having the bytes come over the wire instead of off the disk?<o:p></o:p> color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p> color:#1F497D'>My 2 cents,<o:p></o:p> color:#1F497D'>-Alex<o:p></o:p> color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p> color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p> <div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'> From:<span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Terry Corbet [mailto:member@adobeforums.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 3:16 PM To: flexsdk-dev@adobeforums.com Subject: Re: How to Test AIR 1.5<o:p></o:p> </div> <o:p> </o:p> A new message was posted by Terry Corbet in Developers -- How to Test AIR 1.5 Darrell, Thanks for monitoring this thread and for your suggestion. I know that this is not the forum for bug reporting, so I will wrap this thread up and follow up over there. This thread was started in the hopes of getting a clear, positive white paper to deal with the disconnect between discussions of 'modularization' in an AIR/Flex application as contrasted with just a plain old Flex application, and maybe there is now enough interest that someone will consider doing that. <o:p></o:p> <div class=MsoNormal> <hr size=2 width=200 style='width:150.0pt' align=left> </div> View/reply at <a href="http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b6ed86/17">How to Test AIR 1.5</a> Replies by email are OK. Use the <a href="http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?280@@.59b6ed86!folder=.3c060fa3">unsubscribe</a> form to cancel your email subscription.<o:p></o:p> </div>

tcorbetAuthor

Known Participant

Darrell,

Thanks for monitoring this thread and for your suggestion. I know that this is not the forum for bug reporting, so I will wrap this thread up and follow up over there.

This thread was started in the hopes of getting a clear, positive white paper to deal with the disconnect between discussions of 'modularization' in an AIR/Flex application as contrasted with just a plain old Flex application, and maybe there is now enough interest that someone will consider doing that.

_Darrell_Loverin_

Participating Frequently

The fix to the problem you are seeing on AIR is written up in this bug: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-18202. The bug has been fixed in the 3.x branch. In the "Workaround" section of the bug I explained how you can patch your application when using the 3.2.0 SDK. -Darrell -----Original Message----- From: Terry Corbet [mailto:member@adobeforums.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 12:43 PM To: flexsdk-dev@adobeforums.com Subject: Re: How to Test AIR 1.5 A new message was posted by Terry Corbet in Developers -- How to Test AIR 1.5 Thanks for both replies. I will try to see if I understand LoaderUtils well enough to at least learn what caused the failure. I can wait for the fix, but what I most have really been trying to get in response to my flailing about is some sort of 'best practices' paper talking about the basic issue. With the Nov 17 roll out, I see a huge effort put into the PDF discussing "Loading Sub-Applications", but, as with security white papers and other documents about 'modularization', whenever the author needs adopt his comments/recommendations to AIR, it is like the sentence falls off the end of the earth. "Oh, yes, this doesn't quite apply to AIR." What does apply to AIR? We need a definitive statement concerning caching of Adobe frameworks when talking about AIR. Beyond that, somewhere along the way I submitted a suggestion for enhancement that included the idea that in both environments -- Flex or AIR -- the URL to which we would really like to point when it comes time to access the .swz files, is one on your servers. Even if you are dealing with the complexities of 'sub-applications' that require access to several versions of the same framework files -- or maybe especially if you are dealing with the complexities of 'sub-applications' that require access to several versions of the same framework files -- the best place to host those download requests is at Adobe. We have to rely on your servers for Security anyway, so there is already a built-in co-dependence between what any developer develops and what you are supporting. Putting the framework on an Adobe server and letting the AIR runtime and the Player 'go there' whenever it sees that it is about to load a 'chunk of code' that was compiled for dynamic linkage, would just make the cross-over from Flex to AIR almost transparent. Right now that whole topic is so opaque that I am sure there are not 10 people who are trying to take advantage of the framework cache from an AIR application. Thanks again -- both Flex and AIR are superb facilities, but those Redmond guys still have a lot of clout and we have to do everything possible to stay in front of that pack. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Chotin" <member@adobeforums.com> To: <flexsdk-dev@adobeforums.com> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 8:45 AM Subject: Re: How to Test AIR 1.5 >A new message was posted by Matt Chotin in > > Developers -- > How to Test AIR 1.5 > > Oh, and it's something you could probably patch yourself by looking at how > LoaderUtils works if you don't want to wait. > > > On 11/18/08 5:22 PM, "Terry Corbet" <member@adobeforums.com> wrote: > > A new message was posted by Terry Corbet in > > Developers -- > How to Test AIR 1.5 > > 01. OK, thanks for keeping the promise of something to work with in a > couple of weeks. I downloaded the 3.2.0.3958 source last Friday and > started some more aggressive testing. I did not see any official > announcement of the availability of the 1.5 runtime, but at least the > spate of releases yesterday, spurred some other network traffic that > resulted in my becoming aware that I could get that piece of the puzzle to > go along with the adt code. > > 02. So, now with another full day of testing, I think I can state my > problem, but I don't seem to be able to find the forum or format that will > get the message I think needs to be sent. So, here's just a parable that > should sum it up. > > A. I write five killer Flex applications. > B. I compile them all with dynamic linkage to the Flex framework for the > obvious of advantage of NOT asking my users to download an average of > about an additional quarter megabyte each time. Caching of the framework > [let's ignore the possibilities of their being at different release > levels, just to keep this simple] even if my users don't happen to have > other Flex applications from other sources, is just plain smart in this > use case. > C. Now, I create a shell using the AIR platform, and take advantage of > some of the AIR-special facilities, but basically, all I want to do is > give my users access to the same, original five Flex applications in a > more convenient manner. Let's just say that 'provisioning the desktop' > via one integrated AIR window, is in some ways nicer than 'provisioning > that desktop' via the five independent browser windows. > D. So, with the previous SDK releases [even when switching from Player 9 > to Player 10] on the user's systems, I could continue to use the > dynamically-linked .swf files for the five Flex-based applications via a > SWFloader in the AIR shell. Obviously, this savings of a quarter of a > megabyte times five, was the smart thing to do. > E. With the 3.2.0.3958 release, the Runtime [or the Runtime's interaction > with the Player, I have no idea what that internal architecture looks > like, since you don't document or disclose it] will no longer work that > nice way. Now I am required to link the five Flex-based applications > statically and incur the five times a quarter of a megabyte overhead when > provisioning my users' desktop. > > 03. Who do I send this to in order to get someone to step back and > re-think why it is that you [the collective you] seem to think that the > planning and execution of a modularized application in AIR should not take > advantage of precisely the same, sensible caching that is built in when > the application is just plain old Flex? > > You can tell me that AIR is going to be able to use the Player 10 graphics > primitives to stand on its head and sing in Swahili, but you have just > devalued AIR with these changes. Sex appeal won't make up for solid > systems engineering of large applicati! ons. I am certain no one wants to > devalue AIR but just follow the parable of five applications out to a > dozen or more and look how wasteful the AIR solution becomes. In the > meantime, folks just staying with Flex and ignoring AIR will watch as that > runtime library of cacheable infrastructure grows and matures. > > ________________________________ > View/reply at How to Test AIR 1.5 > <a href=http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b6ed86/8> > Replies by email are OK. > Use the unsubscribe > <a href=http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?280@@.59b6ed86!folder=.3c060fa3> form to > cancel your email subscription. > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------ > View/reply at <a href=http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b6ed86/10> > Replies by email are OK. > Use the unsubscribe form at > <a href=http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?280@@.59b6ed86!folder=.3c060fa3> to > cancel your email subscription. ------------------------------------------------------ View/reply at <a href=http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?13@@.59b6ed86/11> Replies by email are OK. Use the unsubscribe form at <a href=http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?280@@.59b6ed86!folder=.3c060fa3> to cancel your email subscription.

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