I’m working with a prospective client who needs a cross-platform desktop applicationthat will run on both Windows PC’s and Macs that may or may not ever be connected to the Internet. The application needs a rich UI, and will need full access to files on the host computer. Let’s look at the options:
- WPF. Windows only. FAIL.
- Silverlight. Runs in a browser, and in a sandbox. FAIL.
- Java. Ugly as sin. FAIL, FAIL, FAIL.
- Adobe AIR. Lets me use Flash-y UI, runs on both Mac and Windows, is reasonably robust in terms of functionality, and gives me access to the underlying file system and other system resources. WIN.
To become more familiar with AIR, I decided to build a very simple AIR application that would look up and display Bible verses using the ESV (my Bible version of choice) web services. So, I installed Adobe Flex Builder 3 and got cracking. In about 2 hours time, I had a working application that, although it won’t win any beauty contests, does exactly what I wanted it to do. If you want to take a look, you can download it here.
I did run into one bug (HTTP headers not getting returned on a 302 redirect), but overall it was a pleasant development experience. I already have lots of ideas for applications that could leverage AIR and Flex…
{ 0 comments… add one now }