Adobe AIR (also known as Adobe Integrated Runtime and is codenamed Apollo) is a

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

runtime system In computer programming, a runtime system or runtime environment is a sub-system that exists both in the computer where a program is created, as well as in the computers where the program is intended to be run. The name comes from the compile t ...

currently developed by

Harman International Harman International Industries, commonly known as Harman (stylized in all-uppercase as HARMAN), is an American audio electronics company. Since 2017, the company has been an independent subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. Headquartered in Sta ...

, in collaboration with

Adobe Inc. Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

, for building

desktop application A desktop traditionally refers to: * The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor) Desktop may refer to various comp ...

s and

mobile application A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

s, programmed using Adobe Animate,

ActionScript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meani ...

, and optionally Apache Flex. It was originally released in 2008. The runtime supports installable applications on

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, and mobile operating systems, including

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

, iOS, and BlackBerry Tablet OS. AIR is a runtime environment that allows Adobe Animate content and ActionScript 3.0 coders to construct applications and video games that run as a stand-alone executable and behave similar to a native application on supported platforms. A

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HT ...

application used in a browser does not require installation, while AIR applications require installation from an installer file (Windows and OS X) or the appropriate App Store (iOS and Android). AIR applications have unrestricted access to local storage and

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one lar ...

s, while browser-based applications only have access to individual files selected by users. AIR internally uses a shared codebase with the Flash Player rendering engine and ActionScript 3.0 as the primary programming language. Applications must specifically be built for AIR to use additional features provided, such as multi-touch, file system integration, native client extensions, integration with

Taskbar A taskbar is an element of a graphical user interface which has various purposes. It typically shows which programs are currently running. The specific design and layout of the taskbar varies between individual operating systems, but generally a ...

or Dock, and access to

accelerometer An accelerometer is a tool that measures proper acceleration. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change of velocity) of a body in its own instantaneous rest frame; this is different from coordinate acceleration, which is acce ...

and GPS devices. HTML5 applications may run on the

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the ...

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...

included in AIR. Notable applications built with Adobe AIR include

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

Desktop, Pandora One desktop,Top 10 Apps Worth Installing Adobe AIR For

LifeHacker ''Lifehacker'' is a weblog about life hacks and software that launched on January 31, 2005. The site was originally launched by Gawker Media and is currently owned by G/O Media. The blog posts cover a wide range of topics including: Microsoft ...

TweetDeck, the former

Adobe Media Player Adobe Media Player is a discontinued desktop media player that allowed users to manage and interact with their media content, and allowed content publishers to define branding and advertising in and around their content. The Adobe Media Player wa ...

,10 impressive Adobe AIR apps
CNET

Angry Birds ''Angry Birds'' is a Finnish action-based media franchise created by Rovio Entertainment. The game series focuses on the eponymous flock of angry birds who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs. Inspired by the game '' Crush the Castl ...

, and Machinarium, among other multimedia and task management applications. According to Adobe, over 100,000 unique applications have been built on AIR, and over 1 billion installations of the same were logged from users across the world, as of May 2014.AIR app installs cross a billion
Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player Team Blog1 Billion AIR Installations
Ben Forta Adobe AIR was voted as the ''Best Mobile Application Development'' product at the

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event ty ...

for two consecutive years (CES 2014 and CES 2015). In June 2019, Adobe announced it would begin transitioning ongoing support and development of Adobe AIR to

Harman Harman may refer to: People * Harman (surname) Places * Harman, Australian Capital Territory * Hărman, Romania * Harman, West Virginia * Harmans, Maryland * Harman, Virginia * Harman's Cross, Dorset, England Other uses * Harman Intern ...

. Adobe will continue to provide support for versions 32 and earlier until the end of 2020, as support will be managed by Harman.

Features

Using AIR, developers can access functionality including

text Text may refer to: Written word * Text (literary theory), any object that can be read, including: **Religious text, a writing that a religious tradition considers to be sacred **Text, a verse or passage from scripture used in expository preachin ...

vector graphics Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display ...

raster graphics upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum * Digital audio, representation of soun ...

camera A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

, and

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and pub ...

capability. AIR also includes additional features such as file system integration, native client extensions, desktop integration and access to connected devices. AIR enables applications to work with data in different ways, including using local files, local

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the mo ...

databases (for which AIR has built-in support), a database server, or the encrypted local store included with AIR. Developers can access additional functionality by building AIR Native Extensions, which can access full device functionality being programmed in the native language.Using native extensions for Adobe AIR
Adobe Help Center

Desktop features

On desktop platforms, AIR supports: *

Window management A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They work in conjunction ...

– Opening multiple windows, minimizing, maximizing and resizing AIR windows. *

Menu bar A menu bar is a graphical control element which contains drop-down menus. The menu bar's purpose is to supply a common housing for window- or application-specific menus which provide access to such functions as opening files, interacting with ...

– Adding a native menu bar to AIR windows, with sub menus and custom menu items. * File management – Discovering drives, files and folders on the PC, creating and deleting files, renaming, copying and moving files. *

Console application A console application is a computer program designed to be used via a text-only computer interface, such as a text terminal, the command-line interface of some operating systems (Unix, DOS, etc.) or the text-based interface included with most ...

s – Executing native applications with

command-line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive command (computing), commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invokin ...

arguments, and receiving feedback via standard I/O & error streams. * Multithreading – Managing multiple threads, to execute ActionScript 3 code in the background without freezing the user interface. *

Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

– View HTML web pages with full CSS and JavaScript support within applications, with the integrated

-based web browser. * Clipboard access – Programmatically copy or paste text, bitmaps or files into the system clipboard. *

Drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used ...

– Allows users to drag text, bitmaps or files into AIR applications.

Mobile features

On mobile platforms, AIR supports many mobile hardware features: *3D hardware-accelerated graphics rendering (using Stage3D) *

Touch-screen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

events (including multi-touch gestures) *Device camera and microphone access (including video encoding for recorded video) *

Accelerometer An accelerometer is a tool that measures proper acceleration. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change of velocity) of a body in its own instantaneous rest frame; this is different from coordinate acceleration, which is acce ...

and geo-location sensor input ( GPS or otherwise) *Networking with

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...

TCP TCP may refer to: Science and technology * Transformer coupled plasma * Tool Center Point, see Robot end effector Computing * Transmission Control Protocol, a fundamental Internet standard * Telephony control protocol, a Bluetooth communication s ...

and UDP protocols *''AIR Gamepad'' - allows mobile applications to serve as secondary displays and controllers for

games A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (su ...

3D graphics

In 2011, the addition of Stage3D allowed AIR apps access to GPUs for hardware acceleration. Several third-party frameworks have been developed to build upon the functionality of Stage3D, including the

Starling Framework Starling is an open source game framework used to create 2D games that run both on mobile and desktop platforms. It recreates the traditional Flash display list architecture on top of accelerated graphics hardware. Several commercial games have ...

and Away3D. These frameworks are also compatible with AIR, and provide vital performance improvements to AIR apps published for mobile devices.

AIR Native Extensions

AIR apps can be augmented in functionality with the usage of AIR Native Extensions (ANEs). Native extensions are plug-in code libraries that contain native code wrapped with an ActionScript API,Native extensions for Adobe AIR
AIR Devnet allowing developers to access native features not otherwise usable in AIR, such as Apple Game Center or Google Cloud Messaging. Native extensions may be developed by anyone using publicly available tools; some are distributed for free or even as open source, while others are sold commercially. Native extensions may be programmed in the native language on each platform, allowing access to the full set of platform APIs provided by the developer. ( C++ for Windows,

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

and C++ for Android,

Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its N ...

for iOS).

Availability

AIR is a cross-platform technology and AIR applications can be repackaged with few or no changes for many popular desktop and mobile platforms. Different installation options exist for each platform. AIR applications may be published with or without the AIR runtime. Applications packaged with the AIR runtime are larger in file size, and are known as "captive runtime" applications.Generating a Windows installer for your AIR captive runtime application
Adobe Developer Connection If the runtime is not embedded in the app, it must be installed separately. In January 2009, Adobe claimed that there were over 100 million installations of Adobe AIR worldwide, and that "the majority of AIR runtime installations occur at the time the first AIR application is installed by a user". In May 2014, Adobe claimed that over 100,000 unique applications were built on AIR, and over 1 billion installations of the same were logged from users across the world.

Platforms

Adobe AIR, version 32, contains

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the A ...

32, and is available for

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearl ...

and later, as well as

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

10.9 and later. Desktop Linux distributions were available until June 2011 with version 2.6, which ended Linux support. Adobe AIR applications can be published as native phone applications on certain mobile operating systems, such as Android (ARM Cortex-A8 and above) and Apple iOS.iOS features in Adobe AIR 2.6
, Adobe Devnet In May 2017, Adobe stopped releasing AIR for Android, and the app was eventually removed from the Play Store in September 2018, but it can still be downloaded through their website. After Adobe's transition of AIR to Harman, they resumed support for Android and the latest version is only available there. The following table explains to what extent Adobe AIR can run on various

mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablet computer, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal computing, personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical laptops are "mobi ...

Application development

AIR runs applications within a contained

Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on ...

instance. It runs

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

s via

rendering engine. Multiple instances of the browser can be started within a single AIR application, but

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

content executes with some security limitations. AIR does not provide direct access to native GUI elements such as navigation bars or controls. Native extensions can be used to access additional native resources.

Development tools

SDK

The AIR SDK is available as a free standalone download for software developers to make AIR applications. SDK users do not need to install any commercial software to use the SDK, although several options are available. AIR apps can be compiled from the command line using the AIR compiler included in the SDK; the compiler can also be called from an IDE to eliminate the need for the command line. AIR can also be used with

Adobe Flex Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit (SDK) for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich web applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Initially developed by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe Sy ...

. Flex is an integrated collection of stylable

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

, data manipulation and networking components, and applications built upon it are known as "Flex" applications. Flex GUIs are defined in MXML, similar to how

and

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platfor ...

define GUIs; however, Flex does not give access to native GUI components. AIR applications built without the Flex framework allow greater flexibility and performance, and are known as "pure ActionScript" applications. Video games built on the AIR platform are typically pure-Actionscript projects. Various open-source component frameworks are available for pure ActionScript projects, such as ''MadComponents'', that provide UI Components at significantly smaller SWF file sizes.

Software

Adobe distributes three commercial software products for developing of AIR applications in ActionScript: * Adobe Flash Builder (enterprise application development and debugging) * Adobe Animate (graphics design, animation and scripting toolset) * Adobe Scout (visual profiler for performance optimization) Third-party development environments that target the AIR runtime are also available, including:
Moonshine IDE
a free IDE built with Apache Flex and Adobe Air. It can be used to create ActionScript 3, Apache Flex, Apache Royale and Feathers projects from Moonshine. It also provides cloud support. *FlashDevelop, an open-source Flash ActionScript IDE, which includes a debugger for AIR applications *

Powerflasher FDT Powerflasher FDT is an integrated development environment (IDE) built on the Eclipse platform for development of Adobe Flash-based content. FDT enables development of content such as video games, rich web applications and Adobe AIR applications, ...

, a commercial ActionScript IDE *CodeDrive, an extension to

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

for ActionScript 3 development and debugging *

IntelliJ IDEA IntelliJ IDEA is an integrated development environment (IDE) written in Java for developing computer software written in Java, Kotlin, Groovy, and other JVM-based languages. It is developed by JetBrains (formerly known as IntelliJ) and is a ...

, a commercial IDE supporting ActionScript 3 development and debugging
AS3 & MXML for VSCode
a powerful extension capable to turn the popular Microsoft free editor

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, also commonly referred to as VS Code, is a source-code editor made by Microsoft with the Electron Framework, for Windows, Linux and macOS. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code compl ...

in a complete AIR IDE Adobe Flash Builder is the premium tool for Flex application development, since it includes an integrated

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used ...

user interface builder, not found in competing tools like FlashDevelop.

JavaScript applications

Adobe provides for AIR, HTML5 and JavaScript development with

Adobe Dreamweaver Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool from Adobe Inc. It was created by Macromedia in 1997 and developed by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Adobe Dreamweaver is available for the macOS and Windows ...

CS5, although any other HTML editor or text editor can be used. AIR can run a subset of JavaScript, with no ability to dynamically execute code when running in the application sandbox. According to Adobe, this restriction is designed to prevent malicious remote content from attacking a user's system. Because of this restriction, JavaScript frameworks that make use of dynamic JavaScript functions like eval() were not initially compatible with AIR. However, several frameworks including Dojo Toolkit,

jQuery jQuery is a JavaScript library designed to simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation, as well as event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax. It is free, open-source software using the permissive MIT License. As of Aug 2022, jQuery is ...

, and ExtJS were updated to run in AIR's application sandbox. Some frameworks like MooTools were already compatible. Dreamweaver CS4/CS3 requires an additional extension to compile AIR applications, as does Flash CS3 in the form of an update.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2008 software Adobe Flex Adobe Inc. Application programming interfaces Cross-platform software Mobile software programming tools Rich web application frameworks Site-specific browsing