Future of Adobe Air

[ncm123]

Hi,

I am building an extremely critical application in iOS and Android for our organisation. We have to support the application atleast for a period of 10 years.  Is adobe invested in the AIR platform for the long-term. I am afraid if they stop updating AIR after 2-3 years, we would have a big problem.

As it stands AIR is the best platform for our use-case as it supports flash animations directly. Plz let me know about the long-term viability of this platform.

Regards,

Adi

[piotrk92086443]

Hi,

I'm not an Adobe employee, but for extremely critical apps I rather suggest use native solutions. S* happens and Adobe could stop developing Adobe Air or even Apple could stop support something... Good news is example of Adobe politics in case of Flex SDK.  Adobe moved Flex SDK to Apache open source and now is developed via open community.

Best,

Piotr

[zwetan_uk]

Your question is rather puzzling and to me it makes no sense whatsoever.

First, there is not a single technology stack out there which could guarantee you "oh yeah it still gonna be the same in 10 years from now", thing do changes, languages evolve, old framework dies, new framework arrives, server-side 3rd party services rise and dies too (parse for ex), etc.

Second, there is not such thing as developing an app and not updating it over the years, you can not know in advance what gonna happen in the future, for ex: today there is Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, you don't know what gonna happen for a Windows 11 or 12 or 13 etc.

Third, if your app is extremely critical then you have to assign critical resources to it, and that means assigning a team of dev that will not only develop the app but maintain it over the years, that include fixing bugs, adding features and yeah it could also mean switching technology stack in the middle of those 10 years.

See it like that, if right now you were developing a server-side app in PHP 7, you might need to rewrite/update parts of it to adapt to new or deprecated stuff for PHP 8, that would be the same for any programming language and technology stack. people who develop PHP may have a vague idea of what gonna happen in the next version of PHP 8, but they are certainly have no idea of what's gonna happen for PHP 11.

You can not seriously ask someone to guarantee something gonna still work for new stuff that does not exists yet and/or are not known yet.

[ncm123]

I thank you both for your replies. The reason I am concerned is that our particular app is animation intensive. Only flash/air seem to have the capability to handle animation at low weights in iOS / Android.

I know that no one can guarantee anything for the next 10 years. AIR was launched in 2008-09 and has improved since then. How many applications and installs have adobe air apps got till now? This number might be critical to adobe persisting with the adobe air platform.

[Guest]

I concur with the other posts that expecting a software technology to be around in 10 years is not a reasonable expectation. Especially of an employer expecting the employee to maintain something for that amount of time without the possibility of complete re-writes or major changes. The only way you could feasibly have this expectation is that if your company has complete control over the devices that the app is being deployed to and are never allowed to update or are only allowed to update at the frequency of Adobe updating AIR to support the newest OSes from Apple and Google.

As far as Adobe supporting the AIR platform, that all comes down to money and the cost of them continuing to support the AIR/AS3 team. As far as I know, Adobe makes no money directly from AIR. The only thing that really might make money from AIR is being able to point out iOS and Android apps hitting the Top 10 on downloads/purchases and hope that gets more Creative Cloud subscribers.

Now if the animation capabilities of Flash are critical to the app, would it be possible to save out those animations as MOV files that are compressed in Adobe Media Encoder (or your encoding app of choice) and then use those movies in a native app? Trying to throw out a semi-solution.

[zwetan_uk]

I gathered some numbers here
https://discuss.as3lang.org/t/adobe-air-by-the-numbers/476

here a quick summary

• the Adobe AIR shared runtime is installed on 100+ million Android devices (Android only)
• there has been 150k+ AIR applications built with Adobe AIR (Android and iOS)
• there has been 2.5Billion+ AIR applications installs (All Platforms: Android, iOS, Windows and Mac OS X)
  

Adobe has more than once demonstrated that they were committed to both Flash Player and AIR

and it does show in the regular quarterly updates of both those runtimes.

see for extra references

• Flash Player Release Notes
• Flash Player and Adobe AIR feature list

I'm not an Adobe employee, I got no insider info, that does not mean AIR will still exists in 10 years from now, but as a developer I can guarantee you that Adobe AIR is the best secret weapon you could ever lay your hands on, it's not perfect but it does 90% of the job and it does it right compared to other technologies.

The other 10% ?

You will either need to build/buy ActionScript Native Extensions (ANE) to extend the Adobe AIR runtime with specific missing native API

You may need to use another runtime like Redtamarin to go in some places where Adobe AIR can not run like command-line tools, server-side applications and other background services / daemons.

There is no 10 years guarantee but still ... Adobe AIR is a pretty good bet.

[ncm123]

Thanks for such detailed replies.

I love adobe air and the low cost and fast development times that we get from it. That is the reason we have committed a lot of resources to make great games in adobe air.

Do we have an update on the number of installs that adobe air apps have got till date? Also, 150k apps developed is not a small amount. Lets hope adobe keeps building on AIR.

I had also read a post about the air team searching for beta testers for tvOS. Lets hope they launch there soon.

[User_Unknow]

AIR team today released new 24's Beta with tvOS support

[Colin Holgate]

Can you say where you read that? The links to the release notes give 404 errors.

[User_Unknow]

Colin Holgate said:

Can you say where you read that? The links to the release notes give 404 errors.

Their tech writers not so fast as can be and looks like folks that doing SDK not in the same timezone as release manager.

Colin Holgate said

I did the download from the AIR 24 page, and it still seemed to be AIR 23.0.0.274. I'm trying again, in case the files hadn't propagated yet.

24.0.0.148 was at same time as I posted about tvOS. I think some problem with cache on your side...

[Colin Holgate]

The files inside the Mac package are from September 23rd. The Windows one is ok, and I can even see the version number as 24.0.0.148 from Animate. But not surprisingly it doesn't quite work as an SDK.

[Colin Holgate]

I did the download from the AIR 24 page, and it still seemed to be AIR 23.0.0.274. I'm trying again, in case the files hadn't propagated yet.

[Colin Holgate]

The release notes link is working now, but the downloaded file is still AIR 23.

http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashruntimes/shared/air24_flashplayer24_releasenotes.pdf

[piotrk92086443]

One of directions for ActionScript development is Javascript VM for SWFs... For example:  Shumway .

Maybe it is also possible to do a cross-compilation from AS3/Flex to other engines such Unity3D.

[zwetan_uk]

Not a good direction, Shumway is dead

see: BugZilla Bug 1243870 - Firefox Component Shumway is defunct. Move to Graveyard:Firefox Graveyard and close bu... (2016-01-28)

and that's not the only one, another project Swiffy is dead too

see: Google Ads Developer Blog Sunset of Google’s Swiffy tool (2016-06-15)

you can read more about all that here
Some Thoughts on the HTML Target for AIR

I don't see why you would automatically assume that the only directions for ActionScript development
would be to move to another platform like HTML5/JS or Unity3D ?

The subject is about the "Future of Adobe Air" right ?

Wether it is HTML5/JS, Unity3D or Adobe AIR, nobody can guarantee you that any of those tech will be still available in 10 years from now.

[piotrk92086443]

Not a good direction, Shumway is dead

Well.. Right.  Is almost closed project, but open sourced. Mature enough to run some games.  I've tested yesterday and Flex didn't work.

Due to many limitations with even licenses for codecs I think that is not possible to rewrite full Adobe Air VM to JS.

I don't see why you would automatically assume that the only directions for ActionScript development
would be to move to another platform like HTML5/JS or Unity3D ?

You are right.

Let's face it... Flash Builder shows as news that "Adobe Flex 4.12 is released".  This news is from 10 Mar 2014.

Support for Android and IOS is ok but on roadmap that should have also WP10.  And look at Unity3D supported platforms..

Best,

Piotr

[User_Unknow]

WP10 - is dead. MS don't want it. Why Adobe must support it? ))

[piotrk92086443]

Right..  I thought about Windows 10 Mobile.  Is a small market but some companies want to have application on all mobile platforms. 

[zwetan_uk]

Well.. Right.  Is almost closed project, but open sourced. Mature enough to run some games.  I've tested yesterday and Flex didn't work.

Almost closed ?
nope, the project is completely closed as "moved to the Firefox graveyard"

Due to many limitations with even licenses for codecs I think that is not possible to rewrite full Adobe Air VM to JS.

There are some limitations alright ...
but what about developers underestimating how hard it is to rewrite a full Adobe AIR/Flash engine ?

Mozilla given up after few years, Google given up after few years, ...

Does it not tell you anything that after few years of development some big company just stop trying ?

Let's face it... Flash Builder shows as news that "Adobe Flex 4.12 is released".  This news is from 10 Mar 2014.

"Apache Flex 4.15" released in January 2016 would be more accurate

Support for Android and IOS is ok but on roadmap that should have also WP10.  And look at Unity3D supported platforms..

when you mention "WP10" what are you referring to? Windows 10? Windows Phone 10? Windows Mobile 10? Windows App Store? Universal Windows Platform?

Adobe AIR does support Windows 10 and "as is" will install as a classic WIN32 desktop app, now if your problem is to have your AIR app available in the Windows App Store you will need to convert your WIN32 desktop app to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and this is only available since last August 2016

see Apps built using the Desktop Bridge now available in the Windows Store

But here the problem is more on the side of Microsoft Windows than Adobe AIR, the "Windows Phone" has been a moving target with a very low market share, considered "abandoned" by many and the situation is quite uncertain.

see What will Microsoft do with Windows 10 Mobile?

The truth is that Windows 10 Mobile is in an awkward spot, the victim of the company's frequently changing mobile strategy as well as competition from Android and iOS. Without it, the UWP concept hardly makes sense; yet it is hard to see anything other than a small niche for the operating system.

When iOS and Android rules 99% of the mobile platform, you can hardly blame Adobe AIR to not support Windows Mobile.

Personally I find it much more interesting and useful to have support for Android TV and tvOS (since the last AIR 24 beta).

[piotrk92086443]

There are some limitations alright ...

but what about developers underestimating how hard it is to rewrite a full Adobe AIR/Flash engine ?

Of course there is no need to rewrite full Adobe AIR engine.  It possible to rewrite AS3/Flex class foundation and as3/mxml compiler to engine such Unity3D. Destination engine has all VM features what will be needed.  Of course is a lot of hard work with that.  

Shumway is rather in heaven of projects.  Open source for it is a new life. Of course it depends is someone want to develop it.  The same is with Adobe Flex that was moved to Apache Software Foundation and is still developed.

Mozilla given up after few years, Google given up after few years, ...

Does it not tell you anything that after few years of development some big company just stop trying ?

Mozilla is not an oracle. There are many big companies that was run projects and failure with them.  It is a matter of many factors - team quality, time period, available tools, market, alliances and internal funds for the project.

[ncm123]

has anyone tried building windows store apps with air? i believe it can be done through the desktop app converter.

[User_Unknow]

this was possible while MS not cancelled it I remember when Android App was executed on WP10 with Starling

[rewb0rn]

Hey, I have thoroughly invested time for Windows 10 Desktop and Mobile converters. As Anton said, the Android Bridge was able to execute Air builds on Windows 10 mobile but has since been cancelled by Microsoft (and there were bugs, too). The Desktop Bridge is able to convert your desktop app to a Windows 10 Store for Desktop build, but it will not run on mobile. That means there is no way to deploy Air apps on Windows 10 mobile as of now and I agree it should not be added, the target market is way too small and declining.

[rewb0rn]

By the way the new Air SDK 24 features are great! Well done Adobe Keeping fingers crossed for HTML target in Air 25

[piotrk92086443]

Let's face it... HTML target in Air is rather impossible right now...