Air is Dead

[72Pantera]

Let's face it guys. Air is Dead.  Look at the feature list for 4.0.  The pace of development and bug fixes have slowed to a crawl.

It's presented to us as a mobile development platform but you can't pick a video from the Gallery, read the Contacts database or Play a movie.  The forums are full of bugs and when Adobe rarely chimes in it's to ask us to vote.  Shouldn't you just fix bugs?

It's touted as a cross platform mobile environment but it's not listed in a single article comparing them.  No new developer in his right mind would program in Flash at this point. I did for ten years but I'm done. Tired of spending hours on bugs and workarounds.

I wish Adobe would spin out the two or three guys still working on it and open source it.  Maybe they could call themselves MacroMedia.

[Massimiliano_Carli_-_temp]

Read interviews of Shantanu Narayen and you'll see where the company is going.  It's not Flash.

could you post links please?

[Joel_TPE]

You could also have a couple adding the most commonly used mobile element classes like Contacts, Social, Push, etc.

If AIR could add these features will be great, doing it through ANE is still wonderful! ANE has no limit to access mobile device functionalities, with ANE we will never worry about there will be limitation on AIR.

I don't know about others, but for me what I needed most on AIR is about cross compliling to different platforms and what I concern most is the performance of my AIR apps when distribute it to different platforms. Adobe know it well and they did react to it by focusing on the performance inprovement now.

@72Pantera, Come on, let's work together with Adobe, let's bear some burden together with Adobe to sustain this community, if you have time help to create some ANE where you feel AIR is lacking, let Adobe do the rest on the runtime where we couldn't, that's good enough. Adobe has decided (through what I see) to delegate all those features and functionalities that are able to be developed by the community to the community. Remember, AIR is free, it's good enough to allow us to cross compile to different platform with good performance and give us ANE for future proof as mobile device evolve. Thanks to Adobe, really really want to say thank you Adobe!

@72Pantera If your glass is half-full and half-empty, please put your focus on half-full and give thanks!

Joel T.

[72Pantera]

@Joel TPE, I've written an ANE and I've found that if you're processing data in the background it's good. but if you're interacting with UI elements, you get 'lost context' and the screen flashes. It gives you that same 'oh shiiit' moment that you get before your PC crashes. Not what a pro wants in his app.

So that's where I got off the bus. After doing my best to plug the holes that Adobe has left, I realized that if they've quit (and they have), there's nothing we can do to keep the ship from sinking.

[shawnb81]

72Pantera wrote:

@Joel TPE, I've written an ANE and I've found that if you're processing data in the background it's good. but if you're interacting with UI elements, you get 'lost context' and the screen flashes. It gives you that same 'oh shiiit' moment that you get before your PC crashes. Not what a pro wants in his app.

So that's where I got off the bus. After doing my best to plug the holes that Adobe has left, I realized that if they've quit (and they have), there's nothing we can do to keep the ship from sinking.

Not sure if you realize it, but you can simply run in GPU Render Mode, and avoid all context loss completely.Performance is still a buttery 60fps if you know what you're doing. Building components is easy with the Flash Pro > SWC workflow. You won't find anything like that anywhere else.

I'm not sure what you're talking about though, 9/10 ANE's I use, do not cause context loss.

Speaking of avoiding questions, you've been dodging mine this entire thread. What is the better alternative that you're going to use?

Where is this magical bug-free SDK with no extensions, and an API surface on par with AIR?

"So that's where I got off the bus"

What bus did you get on then? I'm not sure you ever really got on the bus, more of a tire kicker

I've been on the AIR Mobile bus for 3.5 years, it has it's warts, but lost attention from adobe is 2-year-old news. I'm still waiting for something better to emerge.

[rionero_in_volture]

"I'm still waiting for something better to emerge."

PhoneGap ...is Adobe

I do not want controversy.

I seek not a religion but a means to pay the rent of the house.

The last app I've done (in air / flex) I have had many problems.

Closed with ane and other but the software is uncertain. I never know what will hold up.

Also there is no a way to put a MAP! Quite a common thing.

I had to use webstage (of course) but it is a solution VERY limited.

In the end, my last quote:

"for ios, android and WP8"

ANE to solve?

Come on, I loved actionscript, I hate javascript.

adobe but gave up, we all know!

[Massimiliano_Carli_-_temp]

up

(Come on, I loved actionscript, I hate javascript.)

("I'm still waiting for something better to emerge." PhoneGap ...is Adobe)

[72Pantera]

@shawnb81, I appreciate your input regarding GPU render mode but I'm not sure if it proves your case or mine.

The ANE I wrote had no UI - it processed header info from a movie file.  The other ANEs I needed and used were third parties.  For example, I used the ImagePicker (https://github.com/freshplanet/ANE-ImagePicker) from FreshPlanet.  It pops the native CameraRoll picker and it throws at least four lost contexts for each movie you pick.  They even note it in their doc. Starling has a call specifically to recover from lost context.

The fact that:

a) a dev shop like like FreshPlanet (the SongPop guys) doesn't know how to do this without lost context and

b) Starling must account for it

means that it not a clean extension architecture. Could I go into the ANE code and program out the lost context? Maybe, but if I have to rewrite and compile a third party ANE to pick a movie from the CameraRoll of my mobile device in 2014, I'm riding the wrong bus.  That's where I got off.

[Jonathan_at_Idle_Games]

72Pantera,

Have you done native development to compare how many times iOS reports an

application suspend or resume?

A couple of things have come up in the past where we thought AIR was

responsible for the lost context events but it was actually iOS sending app

suspend/resume more often than we anticipated.

Not positive this is what's happening, but it is worth investigating before

doing a significant amount of finger pointing.

It sounds like you would rather code natively anyway.

[72Pantera]

@Jonathon, again you help make my point.

I would not rather code natively - if I did, I wouldn't have been in Flash.  I'd rather that my cross platform mobile development environment let me pick a movie from the Gallery using the CameraRoll. Do you submit that that should require writing or debugging an ANE?

Honestly, I don't want to know about iOS suspend and resume. I write business apps that deal with movies taken by the mobile device. Is that the fringe of the mobile device experience?  I think it's core.

It's not pointing fingers to highlight the fact that using the ANE model and an ANE written by professional developers blows a circuit breaker in the fuse panel.  Like I said, even they foreshadow that in the doc.

[Jonathan_at_Idle_Games]

My point is that if you had more experience actually coding in native, you

might not blame AIR for everything that annoys you. Developing for mobile

has its quirks for ANY framework, not just AIR. And the situation is far

worse when doing raw native.

You aren't going to find some magic alternative that has all this stuff

figured out. AIR is not perfect but it's pretty damn good.

[72Pantera]

Jonathan at Idle Games wrote:

My point is that if you had more experience actually coding in native, ...

Jonathon, I don't assume knowledge of your programming expertise and you shouldn't assume mine. 

My point stands and you didn't address it.  You shouldn't have to monitor iOS suspend and resume to pick a movie from the CameraRoll.

[Oldes]

@72Pantera: honestly I hope AIR will not be bloated with requests like yours. Imho, current "native extension" model is the good one. How else you would like to solve it in the cross-platform way anyway? I even don't know what the CameraRoll is, so why I would like to have some nasty code in my app, which never need it?

You should spend more time working than crying that some technology is dead, because there is nobody working for you for free. You should stop. And if you really want your CameraRoll api in "runtime", you should submit a feature request in an appropriate place, not here. Also I've asked you if you have your URLLoader's bug (you've been crying for in the begining) submitted there as well, which was not answered.

[shawnb81]

72Pantera wrote:

@shawnb81, I appreciate your input regarding GPU render mode but I'm not sure if it proves your case or mine.

Well it shows that you don't even have a basic understanding of the capabilities of AIR. You really only need Starling for games, not general purpose Apps.

I think everyone gets "your point", it has been ceded over and over in this thread. It's you who, fingers in ears, refuse to aknowledge or accept anyone else's points.

Honestly, I agree with pretty much everything you've said. It's all correct. The difference is most of use have already accepted it.

1. AIR is in life support, it has been for 2+ years. This is not news to anyone, I'm sorry if you just found this out. Since Adobe killed ASNext in early 2013, everyone saw the writing on the wall.

2. Despite it being in life support, it still has the best API for developing Apps with. Hands down. Especially if you use GPU Render Mode. There is literally nothing else out there that has the same performance and API.

So you can whine up and down, all day long, but there's no miracle cure for what ails ya. You refuse to answer my simple question about an alternative, when the answer is so easy: There is nothing better.

AIR is what it is, take it or leave it. If you leave it, have the respect to not shit all over everyone else's breakfast.

[Jonathan_at_Idle_Games]

Well said, Shawn..

I just don't understand the people who are in this sort of "limbo", where

they are convinced AIR is "dead", yet have no where to go to instead. So

they just harp on AIR mailing lists and forums all day long, further

damaging the integrity of the platform in a public manner and misleading a

lot of impressionable people.

If they don't have faith in the platform, why don't they leave it? Are they

convinced that running around like Chicken Little will make Adobe decide to

market AIR the way Unity markets itself? AIR happens to be a really awesome

cross platform environment that is NOT part of Adobe's core product

offering. Just because they aren't throwing massive dollars at it does not

mean they're going to ditch it any time soon.

Could AIR get scrapped? Maybe. I'm not discounting it as a possibility. But

I'm also not prematurely leaving it when it continues to be the best

choice. If I have to pick up another platform, it'll take me at most a week

to get up to speed. Why switch now? When Adobe has continually stated

they're not dropping support but appear to be ramping up efforts, reality

trumps perception for me. I don't get why others refuse to acknowledge what

Adobe IS saying.

Some people are encountering specific bugs/issues where they feel AIR is

not the best platform for their use case, like this video picking issue.

Even Adobe themselves would say (and has said, especially on the Win Phone

issue) that AIR is not the best choice for everything. Just because it

doesnt suit one's specific needs doesn't mean it's dead and useless to

everyone. Quite the opposite.

Jonathan

[72Pantera]

Shawn wrote:

Well it shows that you don't even have a basic understanding of the capabilities of AIR. You really only need Starling for games, not general purpose Apps.

Again, since we don't know each other, I'll refrain from personal assessments of your programming ability and knowledge - even though you can't.

I write mobile business apps with Air, and therefore need forms, groups, lists and other UI components. That means I need Feathers and Feathers needs Starling.

Shawn wrote:

1. AIR is in life support, it has been for 2+ years.

Seems we agree after all.  I say dead and you say "only mostly dead".

[shawnb81]

72Pantera wrote:

Seems we agree after all.  I say dead and you say "only mostly dead".

Yep, just like we did 6 weeks ago:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5998354#5998354

You can't even be bothered to spend the time to write your own basic components, and lean on "needing feathers"? What a cop out. Compared to writing Native Code, a little work building components in Flash Pro is child's play.

If you are just building some enterprise based shopping-list-app, go use Marmalade or Xamarin or some other x-platform API. You're right, AIR is probably not the best fit for you, since there's no official UI Framework for GPU RenderMode, and Starling is total overkill.

AIR's strrength is in it's ability to make beautiful custom UI's, quickly and easily.

[furian]

shawnb81 wrote:

You can't even be bothered to spend the time to write your own basic components, and lean on "needing feathers"? What a cop out. Compared to writing Native Code, a little work building components in Flash Pro is child's play.

I pretty much like most of your comments (if you're Shawn Blais).

But EXCUSE me, are we living in the same year? Is it 2014, and someone still thinks that we should write our own components? Nah, I hope you're joking.. It's a kind of 8 year old deja vu!

I see no constructive comments, and unfortunately no answers to the correct questions (I'll repeat myself again - please someone answer Pantera, Joseph and Jean-Marcs' questions). Everything else is just a wasted time.

And please let's stop with that crappy "if you don't like it - don't use it". It's called feedback and I guess most companies need it in order to make better products

[TrickeyDee]

And please let's stop with that crappy "if you don't like it - don't use it". It's called feedback and I guess most companies need it in order to make better products

'Air is dead' is not feedback.

[furian]

And you don't help this topic become meaningful with such conclusions, captain obvious Questions were asked, things were discussed. I see you can't answer anything, but anyways thanks for the great comment!

[TrickeyDee]

What does that even mean?

[frankz00]

I'm an ex Flex/AIR developer that just came on to check the status of AIR myself as I was curious about its status.  I can honestly say that whether or not it's true, Adobe certainly does give the impression that AIR is dead.  The developer support from the company is definitely not as strong as from other platforms.

I agree with furian that the "if you don't like, don't use it" attitude is not really a great response. It seems that nowadays users of software have a more "we'll sit here and take it" attitude rather than demanding a certain level of support from the company.  It's no accident that Flash has been kicked to the curb even Adobe didn't put up much of a fight to draw a developer base.

It's bad enough that Adobe is a tough sell out there in the field.  Not demanding better developer support structure gives the "other side" ammo IMHO.

[shawnb81]

I'm not sure why you guys think you're in a position to 'demand' anything. You're just beating a horse that has been dead for close to 2 years.

Idle bitching in a forum is not going to change anything. The only real impact you guys are having is to poison the well, spreading FUD, and ruining whatever sense of community that may have left.

If you care about AIR, do something to help it out.

No components? WRITE SOME. Help the community. Give back. Don't sit there with your hands out, expecting to be given everything on a silver platter.

Write some ANE's to add something to the platform, or create some blog posts to help evangalize the platform.

Something. Anything. Anything is better than just whining and complaining like little spoiled babies.

If you think everything is roses on other platforms, then go, get some experience, and come back when you have a bit more wisdom.

[rionero_in_volture]

I think your answer is very clever.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/6143465#6143465

but I can say that we come here to "whine".

I'm an Adobe customer and CLAIM keeps pace with other technologies.

No one here says that AIR sucks. But it died!

The question that do you in this forum (dedicated to AIR and not pizzas) is:

The feeling is that Adobe has dropped. Is it true?

So far I have not read a CONVINCING response.

To stop technology, today, is a drama. I need a tool to make money not a community.

If I go to do something "fun" I do it in c++.

Can you tell me "take it or leave it". Ok! I LEAVE. In fact my projects I will them with other tools.

Of course I'm sorry.

1) AIR I really like

2) Javascript disgusts me (in fact I will use DART)

2) I'm not like those cool programmers of this forum that change platform as if they changed his underwear.

I know, I'm poor! But bring my code on another system and studying a new language is annoying.

Let me say, finally, that I very much appreciate flash developers ... but I'm not satisfied with the administration of Adobe!

There are much smaller companies who manage to promote (and invest) better on their products.

without wishing to make controversy.

do not bother anymore, because I got my answer.

Ciao!

[furian]

I agree with you, Shawn, but what you're talking about should've been done 5 years ago (and even more). And some people did - there are alot of open sourced things, but Adobe WAITED YEARS before supporting someone (you know how obsolete open source projects get in Flash community). And they supported Feathers and Starling. While the latter is great, I don't think anyone really likes the workflow of Feathers.

But HEY! Adobe sponsored A SINGLE DEVELOPER to develop one of the core functionalities - UI components! (clapping sounds) You find this normal? Seriously? Do I have to feel guilty because of the fact that it took years for Adobe to make one of the dumbest decisions ever - to outsource such a core task to a single guy? Come on, let's everyone out here start making it's own framework for components

As we sit here and pray for any constructive answer from Adobe, others are working: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=644044388975187 (sorry, couldn't find video on youtube).

This says it all! Tanki is one of the fewest games that took real advantage of Stage3D (along with King's Road). And they dropped it! Yeah I know it's not AIR, but it's even worse.

Meanwhile we're talking about building our own components, and applausing the fascinating innovation of having more characters in text field (clap clap)!

[makc3d]

furian wrote:

Adobe sponsored A SINGLE DEVELOPER to develop one of the core functionalities - UI components! (clapping sounds) You find this normal?

It's not the first time, too. Remember Flash IDE UI components by Grant Skinner?