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

[Frédéric C.]

I know I should not read that kind of threads. Now I feel depressed...

[dews]

No need to be depressed - look what AIR 28 now gives us - and the feature list that Chris mentioned is clearly well underway.  Apple or Google are not going to stop 3rd party tools from publishing - over 10% of the productivity APPs currently in the APP stores are written with AIR.  Yes, Jobs put the nail in the coffin of Flash but he's dead too.  There is new blood in development all the time - AIR will succeed based on its merits.

Look, the best way to ensure the longevity of AIR is to use it to create killer APPs like @TeotiGraphix​10k+ downloads of Little Drum Machine.

All will be well people - just get to coding!

[alevys]

Yes, just have to write the code and do more good projects with Adobe AIR, a lot depends on us developers!

Now I started a new project, and make it on AIR. Get from the development of a lot of fun!

[PippoApps]

True. AIR will thrive just because it's the best cross-platform framework out there. The stigma is slowly dissolving, even lame Jobs fans are realising it. We just need to get rid of the "F" word since it's too easy to trigger biased ignorant criticism based on hype and not on facts. I have lost more then one gig because at an advanced stage of negotiation, I have been told that a "friend who knows about development" told them that AIR is made with Flash, therefore it's bad. Flash Builder should become AIR builder, FlashDevelop AIRDevelop, and so on...

It will be fun though to witness the evolution of online gaming. I work a lot producing games that run in browser and on devices, but after 2020? Is it going to be canvas in browser and AIR on devices? Who knows...

In the meantime, I enjoy really a lot coding in AS. It is such a luxury compared to other environments.

[ASWC]

Yeah removing "flash" everywhere seems like a good idea. Btw does anyone have links to AIR market on Ios? I hear bunch of people talking about AIR got x % but I can never find any info on that. 10% as claimed on previous post is enormous but is this a real number, seriously.

[dews]

This is one - scroll down and look at market share by category:

Adobe AIR - Android library statistics - AppBrain

[Colin Holgate]

I think I have know of two people mentioning that in presentations, so I emailed them both to ask where the figure came from. I'll let you know what they say.

[PippoApps]

I don't know. I think only Adobe has access to those kind of stats.

[lgabrielmf]

I'll tell my story. A couple of years back I had to choose a technology to develop a desktop solution for my project.

I had some experience with Flex before and after studied the possibilities I came up with the conclusion that AIR was the way to go. So I've kicked off the project in it. Some time later some friends started to state that it was a wrong decision and that I should step back and migrate to some Javascript Technology. I refused. Simply because I do believe in AIR as the best, not only for desktop, but as a cross platform either.

And I must say that after reading all this thread I am more confident than ever that it was the best decision. And I am confident that AIR will somehow emerge again and take the spot it deserves.

[georgefrankperry]

AIR is entirely underrated, and it is 100% due to the Flash association. Adobe needs to push AIR as its own platform and completely disassociate with the Flash brand. I love the AIR platform and believe it will continue on for many years to come. We have yet to see the best days of AIR development.

[PippoApps]

I call it the "F" word. Never to be mentioned. It happened at least twice that a job at an advanced stage of negotiation, was refused by a client because a "friend who knows about development" told him that AIR is Flash and Flash is bad. Flash which allows us to play MAME in the browser, just like JavaScript sadly today's opinions most of times are based on hype and emotion and not on facts.

[ASWC]

That summarizes the AIR problem perfectly. Its Flash association is its number one problem, like I said previously, it's hard now to find a "best cross platform technologies" article where AIR is even mentioned in the footnotes.

[rewb0rn]

Well this is also Adobe's fault for not pushing it to tech news sites..

[PippoApps]

Adobe is a big company, and needs to report to shareholders. I am sure there is a reason in "damage assessment" behind this. They invested a lot in keeping Animate alive, and they are doing a great job maintaining and upgrading AIR. A low profile strategy was probably the best option so far not to trigger "flash haters" also against AIR and Animate. I am sure when the time is right they will adjust trajectory.

[TeotiGraphix]

This is so true, but who knows if they will actually come out of the closet.

[pol2095]

Flash is heavily optimized vs other technology (html...).

It is planned to add anti-aliasing  for Stage3D on Android ?

Thanks

[sfxworksTrue]

TBH if flash was just renamed its bad rep would all go away. People are just that dumb and the technology has dramatically improved.

[sfxworksTrue]

But playing an SWF needs to remain in AIR for future project purposes.

[sfxworksTrue]

Case example: Raspberry Pi moderators. They modded my entire discussion out of hate for the environment when I was asking how to put it on the Pi back in the day. Everyone is so triggered that by that word it's hilarious.

[Boy_Carper]

Will AIR have a future on Chromebooks? We provide educational software and see a huge increase in Chromebooks users. We are able to install the Android version of the app on the chromebooks that support this but this won't work for most of our users since this is a feature only supported on newer chromebooks and for some devices still in beta.

[zwetan_uk]

Chrome Apps are dead, as Google shuts down the Chrome Web Store section

Google says it is "roughly targeting mid-2018" for PWA desktop apps. There's still no word on removing Chrome Apps from Chrome OS, though. If only 1 percent of users used Chrome Apps when it was supported on the major desktop OSes, you've got to wonder how dead and abandoned the platform will be when it is only available on Chrome OS.

What you have is a Chrome OS problem, not an Adobe AIR problem.

[Boy_Carper]

I'm talking about Android apps running on Chromebooks, not PWA apps. My question is if there is any way to run our Flash/AIR app on a Chromebook after 2020 when Google kills the browsers flash support besides installing it as an Android app.

[ASWC]

There are no other ways at least for now but it's not to say there won't be before the 2020 Flash drop.

[zwetan_uk]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Boy+Carper  wrote

I'm talking about Android apps running on Chromebooks, not PWA apps. My question is if there is any way to run our Flash/AIR app on a Chromebook after 2020 when Google kills the browsers flash support besides installing it as an Android app.

Dude ... you're asking on an Adobe forum what will be the future of Google based hardware and software ...

Google could as well phase out Chrome OS or replace it with a new OS like Andromeda OS / Fuchsia

but nobody knows because Google did not announce anything.

So far the only thing that is certain is that Google has promised to not kill Chrome OS before 2020.

THat's why your question is bogus, you should not be worried about the Flash support on Chrome OS after 2020,

you should be worried if Chrome OS would even be a thing after 2020 and that something to ask on a Google forum.

[ASWC]

I think you are misunderstanding the question/concerns, this is not about Chrome OS per say but about Chromebooks app delivery which it seems will soon only support Android App via play store and of course web hosted browser apps (HTML only). Carper should probably consider the flash version already legacy and start switching completely to Android only or find a way to translate the flash app into a HTML equivalent. Chromebooks are a big market for education and bunch of companies need to publish there so it looks like that's gonna be only Android/HTML and nothing else.