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

[chris.campbell]

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

[Born2code]

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]

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]

@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.

[chris.campbell]

Customers of AIR are both developers and end users (who download the shared runtime).  The priorities I listed are for the runtime (which include both Flash and AIR), and while security does come into play with AIR, it's more often an issue with Flash.  Regardless, it's always our top priority.

If we injected a bug that impacted end users running with the shared runtime, depending on the severity, we might consider this a critical issue and something we'd immediately fix.  Most of the time, those end users have developers that are supporting their applications and we work with them, but sometimes they do not.

Thankfully, as we've seen in our survey and analytics, the vast majority of developers have moved away from the shared runtime and now focus solely on the captive, so we have less of a chance of silently injecting issues to your customers.

Critical issues for a developer may be similar problems, or it may be specific to the build process, etc.

[TeotiGraphix]

Chris thanks for the reply and yes AIR is fantastic, I just hope Adobe sees that it is valid and actually has more than a niche in the run-time arena.

I still remember sitting at the Adobe Component Developer conference in San Francisco back in what, 2005 and saying this is awesome technology when you guys announced it to us.

So yeah as others have mentioned thanks for keeping it going and my "grudge" was the way Adobe handled Flex as it was huge, I bet if it wasn't as tied to Flash back in 2011 and more to AIR, Adobe might have handled it differently.

[StephenPS]

Chris,

In terms of features and improvements you are working on, from a developer's perspective, it seems to me that the process of publishing to iOS and Android could be greatly improved and made more effecient with less risk of last minute errors if the Publish Settings more correctly created and managed the required XML file.  For example the Apple Beta requirement is not allowed for and needs to be managed between published and local builds.  There are other examples mainly around the inclusion of third party ANEs needing special elements included.

These kind of issues lead to the XML having to be made write only and managed separately and manually which, first time through, takes a lot of working out (with little feedback on the cause) and subsequently is a time consuming nuisance.  A little time spent on this area would make life a lot simpler.

On a much bigger scale I know but a better work flow to take an existing Actionscript project for iOS/ Android to HTML (and/or Facebook Gameroom downloadable) would be awesome.  At the moment the conversion really just seems to convert assets to a sprite sheet and comments out code (at least that on the time line - any in separate class files where 99.9% of mine is just gets ignored).  Code then needs to be re-written and re-structed to such an extent that it is as easy to start from fresh.  Then future updates need to be managed in both code bases equally.  To me this is the biggest loss with Flash going as it means there is no reasonable way to use a single code base for web and mobile.

So it would be great if you can consider both of those for inclusion in your road map.  The first should not be too difficult but I appreciate the later is much more complex.  If you can crack it though it would really strengthen Adobe Air's position as a multi platform engine.

Thanks

Stephen

[rewb0rn]

Hi Chris,

thanks for your replies and the additional perspective, it's appreciated! We are excited for the upcoming roadmap! Is there a chance for an HTML5 target? Any feedback on this from the team?

Thanks,

Ruben

[Born2code]

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.

[joseg24323683]

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?

[kennyTru]

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.

[dews]

No mention of AIR in Adobe MAX - why?

[Colin Holgate]

AIR is a publishing output. I don't think there are any JPEG or MPEG-4 sessions either. And there aren't any Android sessions. There are several Adobe Animate sessions, though at least one of those isn't likely to mention AIR. The others might.

[TeotiGraphix]

Yeah I was about to say that realistically, MAX is a design summit, AIR is a runtime, it's like Apples and Oranges although both Adobe.

[Colin Holgate]

One thing you could petition for is that Ajay talks as much about AIR as he can in this session:

Adobe MAX 2017

The description is animation heavy, but hopefully he'll talk about everything that is new.

[kennylerma]

Certainly a valid point, but I'm thinking more in the terms of promoting AIR and it's abilities and what people are doing with it.  There should be demos of projects and discussions on the capabilities at every Adobe MAX.  This is not foreign to Adobe MAX.  This helps to promote the viability of AIR so others can see what's possible and perhaps make AIR part of a business development stack.  Currently, AIR is shoved in a corner and anyone new to development likely has no idea that AIR exists. 

[joseg24323683]

I get that MAX is design summit only. Announcing the roadmap here seems a bit shady. Might as well just whisper it in AS3 developer ears only so nobody else can hear that AIR is alive an well and has a bright future. I remember back when there was a Flash Gaming Summit and that would tell the future for flash developers. Where is that now? I just feel we have been abandoned by Adobe. At least for me if I am going to take AIR serious as a platform then Adobe needs to be a bit more serious about it.

[pol2095]

Hello,

Is a end-of-life for Flash player browser plugin and standalone (projector) too ?

Thanks.

[Colin Holgate]

No, SWF and standalone projectors should carry on, though it is possible that projectors won't be developed more, seeing as you can make desktop standalone AIR apps. Only the browser plugin will go away.

[ASWC]

It's more and more difficult to find (at least commercially) a place for standalone apps, they used to be convenient for CD distribution but CD are disappearing as well.

[zwetan_uk]

standalone projectors are quite useful on Linux

especially since the projectors are back with Flash Player 24

it allows to easily produce a a single exe without the need of a plugin installed

if you feel the limit of AIR 2.6, it can be an alternative

[Born2code]

Hi Colin,

any updates on when we can expect the latest AIR road map?

thanks as always...

[Colin Holgate]

It's Chris that would be the one to ask. Given that Adobe MAX starts in 8 days, I would think he's busy getting ready for that at the moment.

[Born2code]

ok tx, hope we hear from Chris after the show with a packed feature set...

regards

[rewb0rn]

It wouldn't have to be new packs of features. Fixing things and reiterating the committment on Air would be enough. But I have my doubts it would be mentioned at all.

[Colin Holgate]

AIR 27 just got updated again.