Linux Developers Can Now Use Adobe AIR 1.5

December 30, 2008 by Sanjay

Linux Developers can now use the graphic capabilities of Adobe AIR 1.5 technology to design and develop their applications for their favorite operating system.

Adobe AIR 1.5 is a cross operating system runtime that enables developers combine HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash and Flex technologies to deploy internet applications outside the browser and onto the desktop. The software is a product of San Jose, California-based Adobe Systems Incorporated, and can be downloaded free of cost from this site: http://get.adobe.com/air/.

Besides Linux, Adobe AIR has been hithertofore available on Windows (all flavors) and Mac OSX versions 10.0+.

Using Adobe AIR, Linux developers can deliver applications built with web technologies, without the need for a browser having to run in the background. Programs can be coded using any IDE of their choice, including ones provided by Adobe such as Flex Builder, Flash and Dreamweaver. Alternatively, any text editor can be used with the AIR SDK to build an application. Frameworks that can be used to create an AIR application include Dojo Toolkit, Ext JS, jQuery, MochiKit, MooTools, and Spry Prerelease.

Because AIR applications are desktop-centric, Linux developers will find it easier to couple the desktop’s powerful security features with their applications, as compared to web-based applications which have to contend with unpredictable attacks, including anonymous or untrusted websites.