AIR33 Where is it?

[Leo Kanel]

Is it me or AIR33 Beta is delayed? We are a few days before April and there is no beta version yet. It looks like the 1st quarter release is missed.

[DaveCates]

Just catching up on the news, epic news at that too!

chris.campbell, I've been using Air since it was in Beta years ago and have developed and launched some mega apps for a wide variety of clients including some huge multi-nationals (P&G, Astrazeneca, Novartis, Sony, BBC to name a few). I ABSOLUTELY love Adobe Air and nothing at all comes close for cross-platform development.

I run a successful agency and several tech startups and I struggle to justify moving away from Air. We've just tried React Native and it's a complete mess! So much fragmentation, reliance on goofy libraries that may not exist in a few days, let alone months etc etc...and how do you even get started as a noob with it all? NIGHTMARE.

Comms around the roadmap has been a challenge over the past year or two and I understand that and why - although at times I do struggle to understand Adobe's direction if I'm honest. It's mega frustrating when businesses like mine rely so heavily on the tech and are very loyal. However, I do understand and am excited to get to know Andrew and the Harman team. I hope the community can work together with Harman to support, evolve and market Air as the amazing system it is. I really do hope that the platform can re-gain momentum in the developer community and become a serious well-known player for cross-platform development.

Finally, I just want to personally say to chris.campbell a big sincere thanks for all your loyal support and hard work over the years. I've built a successful business mainly based on Actionscript and Adobe Air. I came to Flash in version 4, became a specialist AS3/Air contractor/freelancer and it's gone from there...you and the team have done a lot for me and I wish you all well in the future. Thanks

[PippoApps]

DaveCates​

Nice message indeed. I fully recognize in your words and join you in thanking Chris and the whole team. Me too I started from Futuresplash, up to building a business on top of Flash/AIR in over 2 decades, and fed mine plus more than a few other families thanks to this amazing technology.

I had the same bad experience trying other cross-platform technologies, including Cordova and Unity. I confess I have been tempted to leave IT for good if I couldn't rely on the beauty of AS3 and AIR anymore.

With these amazing news I feel confident towards the future. We could consider to organise ourselves and maybe start an AIR developers' guild in order to advocate for this technology. Wishing all the best to the AIR team at Adobe, and to the AIR team at HARMAN!

Let's celebrate

[phillipkerman]

The personal investment by so many Adobe employees can't be over stated.  I'd like to think my criticism that follows can not overshadow that fact.

But... while it became obvious there were legal or business negotiation reasons not to comment publicly, this news and promise of forthcoming support is simply too late.  Many businesses have moved on--as they're just not nimble enough to make a one-eighty at the 11th hour. Sure there's another month or two until August--but many software projects have to be planned more than a couple months out.  "Best possible" outcome--okay, I agree it could be worse.  Frankly, the businesses I work with will never want to rely a vendor with this kind of response.  It's not so much "too little" but it's unfortunately "too late".  I hope Harman has a way to make money on this.  Can you tell I'm not bullish on AIR?

Maybe in the future if I haven't learned my lesson by then, or have a masochistic bent I'll give Harman AIR a whirl.  If I had to predict the future I think it's more likely I'll be looking back at the good old days of AIR not unlike how Flash is sometimes revered.

[PippoApps]

OMA2k​

I am flattered and moved by your study of my literary creations I am sorry you didn't get the ironic part though.

[el111]

ajwfrost75​

You mention that AIR33 will bring 64bit support.

Has the Android SDK Platform, Tool etc also been updated?

AIR29 last year had the yearly upgrade:

Android Version	8.1
SDK Platform	27
SDK Tool	26.1.1
Android Build Tool	27.0.3
Platform Tool	27.0.1
Android Support Repository	47.0.0
Android Google Repository	58
LLDB	3.0
Android Emulator	27.0.5
Gradle plugin version for Android	3.0.1
Multidex jar	1.0.2

[el111]

ajwfrost75​

Current AIR Android versions

Android Version	8.1
SDK Platform	27
SDK Tool	26.1.1
Android Build Tool	27.0.3
Platform Tool	27.0.1
Android Support Repository	47.0.0
Android Google Repository	58
LLDB	3.0
Android Emulator	27.0.5
Gradle plugin version for Android	3.0.1
Multidex jar	1.0.2

Regarding SDK platform etc being updated.

Google are enforcing that any new apps on the Google Play Store have a mimimum targetSdkVersion of 28 from August 1 and any updates from November 1

so from my understanding that means this is not a nice to have but actually as critical as the 64bit work HARMAN have being doing.

Meet Google Play's target API level requirement  |  Android Developers

[ajwfrost75]

Okay thanks for that - yes we've not got into the details of this but I will check with our lead Android guy on Monday! I'm wondering whether there are some options we can provide around this, will chat to the ANE providers about it...

Thanks

[el111]

Thanks for that. Though, you are chatting to an ANE provider There are 2 walled garden ANE providers but also others with open source. I was involved in bringing Swift support, a few patches to adt, ARKit, Kotlin, C# bindings and the Chromium based ANE for Desktop for example.

Have a good weekend.

[kennylerma]

ajwfrost75​ My last hold out with Adobe AIR was to see if a WebAssembly target would be offered since Flash Player is ending.  In my opinion, it would be irresponsible not to.  I'll be waiting to see if HARMAN adds this as a target.

[marcanw]

So when do we have the new android 64?

What will be the implication with the ane?

When does the android q issue will be solved?

How much do we have to pay?

[PippoApps]

Do you have any questions?

[Paul Darky]

I just read about this.

Does it mean that I will have to keep paying for Adobe Animate and aside that I will have to pay HARMAN for the AIR SDK?

[PippoApps]

Yes Paul, Animate is only an IDE, the SDK is priced differently.

[_flashman_]

HARMAN, any update? Please give us some approximate release date

[ajwfrost75]

Hi

We're pushing out our third beta version shortly (tonight I hope - internal testing is looking good)..

Our challenge then to get the 'full' release out is more about infrastructure than it is about the AIR code itself: worst-case we'll keep doing things manually, but there is some progress towards getting a web site/portal together for people to go and download the SDK themselves and to do the subscription/management of this.

thanks

  Andrew

[AlexUrrutia]

I think ANEs should be updated according to the 64bit SDK, so commercial ANE providers must be ready to update! (Distriqt, Myflashlabs, etc)

[Leo Kanel]

And Adobe's announcement.

The Future of Adobe AIR | Adobe Blog

[ajwfrost75]

We'll hopefully be able to provide more details before too long, but yes, we're looking forward to supporting AIR; Adobe's blog post hopefully explains it, and we'll get an updated website with FAQ up and running shortly. The plan is for AIR SDK to be free to download and use for hobbyists/smaller developers i.e. having a 'free tier', and then charging for larger/commercial use. The charges are then used to fund our development team and so the more people who use it, the more we can develop it! We're aiming to keep charges to low/reasonable levels though, so as not to impact folk too much (i.e. small fees but from lots of companies).

HARMAN (or the part of it within which I work) has been in partnership with Adobe since 2006 working on integration/support of Flash runtimes for mobile/embedded platforms, so we've got a lot of experience - Adobe wouldn't have done this otherwise!

And yes, ANEs need to be updated, we've already internally updated and checked the ADT tools to ensure this works, it should be fairly seamless I hope. We'll be providing a beta release to Distriqt, MyFlashLabs and others as soon as the updated SDK license agreement has passed our legal and financial review process.

This has been a long time in coming but we're excited to see how this works out!

thanks

  Andrew

[AlexUrrutia]

ajwfrost75​ Andrew, so the AIR SDK development would be more active?  more time dedicated to AIR SDK? as Adobe AIR team hasn't been that active lately.

[ajwfrost75]

That's the plan! It obviously needs to be commercially viable for us but we believe it will be, by requesting small fees from a high volume of developers...

[chaky]

I wonder what will happen to Flash Builder 4.7. Will AIR 33  support Flash Builder 4.7?

[PippoApps]

Thank you Andrew.

Please consider including in the FAQ the following questions:

- Will Animate CC continue to leverage ActionScript and export of SWF files?

- Will AIR still be integrated in Animate CC IDE leveraging export profiles, AIR SDK versions management, debugging, etc?

- What will be of the uber-useful Adobe Scout profiling and debugging app?

- Will HARMAN also maintain and/or update ActionScript language? Including reference?

- Will HARMAN support Starling like Adobe used to do in the past?

thank you very much. You will probably be overloaded by our questions right now

[chaky]

Yeah I am interested in Adobe Scout too. It is awesome tool for debugging.

[federicor30206780]

Thank you very much Andrew, sounds very good !!!

[Frédéric C.]

Oh my god,  now I'm officially excited! This is AWESOME! Thank you!