Thinking About the Purpose of AIR

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I had a really interesting discussion today with someone at the On AIR Bus tour event in Chicago. Towards the end of the night he came up to me and asked “So what is AIR?” Having given the keynote, this kind of question scares me and makes me wonder if I need to rethink how I explain what AIR does. But I answered his question with a question and asked him what he did and why he was here (he had a good reason). As I did that, I realized that the purpose of AIR changes for different people.

I think there are a lot of subtleties to AIR that are difficult to put into words. Having your app run outside of the browser doesn’t sound very exciting, but from a user experience standpoint it’s a very different world. Even without any AIR hooks at all, having native chrome and the ability to register file types or have an icon running int the dock/system tray may be a good reason to adopt AIR.

However I realize that’s not the goal. The argument seems to come in when we talk about AIR with regards to the “browser movement”. The browser is great but it obviously has limitations. In my mind, the major purpose of AIR is to enable web developers to get around those limitations without leaving their comfort zone. We don’t want you to forego your web applications altogether, but rather give you more tools to create the best experience for your needs. And because AIR lets you create “real” desktop applications your experiences can take advantage of that. Keep that in mind throughout MAX.

[tags]Adobe, AIR[/tags]

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  • http://rasterweb.net/raster/ Pete Prodoehl

    Ryan, thanks for stopping by the Tech Cafe at Bucketworks in Milwaukee and explaining what AIR is.

    Right now I’m finding Mozilla’s WebRunner and AIR to be interesting things to dig deeper into.

  • http://www.animalhm.com TarantuT

    Air is life as water is!!!

  • Hans

    AIR is a platform on which web developers can build desktop applications using the same technologies they’ve been using to build web applications.

    In a sense, it’s the inverse of Visual Studio… traditionally for desktop development, but retrofitted for the web in more recent years.

    At least that’s what AIR is about for me. :-)

  • http://rasterweb.net/raster/ Pete Prodoehl

    Another difference from Visual Studio, it actually runs on a platform besides Windows. :)

  • thinman

    Seems like having the opportunity to articulate the subtle and significant nuances amid the distinctions between what AIR is and what AIR does can make for potentially rich & varied talks.

    Just like the dialog between what Flash is and what it does (can do, will do, could.. would.. should..), AIR is extending the DISCUSSION to the desktop and well as it is extending our online apps’ webcentricities there.

    Fun times, indeed. Keep you on your toes, for sure. But I think that guy was a Microsoft marketing plant trying to come up with sound bites so they could jump the gun with spin around more vaporware and steal your thunder.

  • http://www.learningwell.info Economist

    What does it mean AIR in your terms? I don’t understand

  • http://www.inovatron.wordpress.com Luiz Daniel Lima

    Hi, I was reading Seth Godin´s Blog and I found it amazing he posted about the promises of RIA and technologies like AIR. I quote:

    “While I’m at it, I think we’re on the edge of two big software breakthroughs. The first is programs that live on the web instead of your desktop (I know, we’ve heard a lot about how this is the next big thing, but it’s almost here) and second is in desktop software that is truly web-aware.”

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    […] A few weeks ago I came across a blog post by Ryan Stewart titled “Thinking About the Purpose of AIR” and it got me thinking. […]