Adobe AIR 2017 Roadmap

[kennyTru]

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.

[Applauz78]

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.

[DQvsRA]

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

2. Promotion

[rewb0rn]

This!

[saglam.mehmet]

We strongly need an embed Pdf viewer class!

[Colin Holgate]

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]

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...

[Colin Holgate]

How about StageWebView?

[saglam.mehmet]

Yes it shows pdf as well, but it displayed on top of any display objects you know... We need to show some flash objects over the document.

We've converted thousand of pdf files to swf. That's what we did. But that's totally headache and we'll do it again

[Colin Holgate]

I suspect you meant to say you'll never do it again.

One idea comes to mind, which may not be practical if you're talking about scrolling PDFs, but for static full screen ones you could get the image of the StageWebView, and set the bitmapdata of a background bitmap to that image.

[saglam.mehmet]

Unfortunately that way is not effective for us,  as you thought. (especially for mobile apps) But thanks for answer. Pdf format was invented and announced by Adobe as you know. In my opinion, rendering pdf files inside air applications bring a huge power to the platform. We should able to manually navigate, scroll, zoom and display some object on it i think...

[Colin Holgate]

Yes, that would be nice. I think the fact that Flash was invented and announced by Macromedia may be one reason there isn't the support you would expect.

[RandomReado]

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 ...

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.

[seyfx001]

2017 Roodmap?

[caiocanalli]

Yes Chris, any news in sight?

[bierhere]

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]

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

[Leo Kanel]

Any news on this? Is a roadmap coming?

[IGZN]

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

[ASWC]

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.

[hferreira80]

ASWC​,  I don't want to start a debate about you but I can't take it any more.

I read the adobe foruns for years and you are the most pessimist person that I see around.

Maybe your are right (or maybe not) but doesn't matter, this is futurism and don't bring value to the table. It's like debate about the sex of the angels.

I know several companies that sell millions every year and guess what, they use, Visual Basic 6 (yes, you read it correctly and it's not a single case).

The runtime don't die for it self (except if the OS don't allow to run it anymore and Microsoft failed miserely when tryed it with Windows 8 and again, on the more recent news again with Windows 10 S).

What dies it's the mind of some people.

[Colin Holgate]

In most movies I think they are male.

On topic though, here's the AIR 29 beta release notes:

See release notes

[hferreira80]

Hahaha, yes it's true

Yes, I already read, exciting news.

It seems that Win 64 will finally became final release and the merge with 32 bits SDK was a good surprise.

[ASWC]

Just for accuracy, I've been posting on these forums since last year only, my last previous posts were around 2010.

[ASWC]

FB 4.7 and Scout have been removed from Creative Cloud .... What do you think, should I keep being pessimistic?

[hferreira80]

I don't use FB 4.7 for years now.

I don't use (and never installed before) Scout.

For me it's irrelevant.

Doesn't meaning nothing.

The new AIR releases every 3 months it's what is relevant now, the rest if past and futurism.

I don't understand why someone relies on FB yet.

We have much better alternatives for years now.