Adobe turns up the heat on AIR with new Flex IDE

[Jitway]

The challenge before the big development tools vendors is to build a Web applications platform that's as "open" as is feasible, up to the point where the vendor needs to monetize it to make its investment pay off. Today, it's Adobe's turn.

 

The race is "on," to borrow the watchword from Adobe's marketing campaign launched this morning, between Adobe and Microsoft to determine whether a graphical, boundary-crossing runtime platform is preferable for delivering applications over the Internet to a Web browser. Microsoft's entry in this field is Silverlight, which leverages the graphical library already in Windows. Adobe's entry is AIR, which has its own leverage -- the near ubiquity of Flash video on the Web.

 

Adobe's latest entry in this field went live this morning, with the "this-time-we-really-mean-it" launch of version 1.0 of the AIR distributable runtime platform, officially no longer in testing. This is the component which, once distributed to Windows or Mac OS systems (the Linux edition remains in beta, according to Adobe), will enable an online server to distribute rich functionality over the Web, without the intervention of a browser.

 

While the SDK for Flex is not only free but open source as well (Adobe prefers to distribute it using a Mozilla license), its suggestion that developers can use "the IDE of their choice" doesn't have a very exciting ring to it. Imagine trying to do your own version of last year's AIR-based eBay browser project using Microsoft Visual Studio, and you might agree Adobe's policy is about as free as a cheese-head hat giveaway outside of Texas Stadium.

 

That said, the price of the new Flex 3 Builder IDE standard edition has come down to $249, formerly $399 (upgrade price is $99). The Professional Edition may make up the difference, though, with a steep $699 price tag.

 

 

I find this very interesting indeed. Adobe has been boasting about this forever and looks like they have finally delivered. Now lets see what web developers can indeed do with app.

 

 

Read about it HERE