Ultrashock Forums - View Single Post

senocular · 2007-10-05 #3

A lot of the basic ideas have been touched upon, and all are pretty right on. Let me see if I can summarize (and some if not most of this will be redundant):

SWF files are played by the Flash player.

The Flash player needs to be installed on a users computer in order to be able to view SWF files (this usually as a Flash plugin/ActiveX control for the browser).

SWF files are created with authoring environments like Flash and Flex

SWF files leverage code defined in the Flash player native code to operate

Both Flash Authoring and Flex Builder have their own components and code bases from which additional functionality is derived; in Flex, this is the mx 'Flex' framework (Flash now uses code in an fl package).

AIR is Adobe's attempt to allow web developers easily create desktop applications using the same technologies used to make web applications (Flash/Flex and HTML/JavaScript).

Like the Flash player, AIR needs to be installed on a user's machine in order for an AIR application to run on it. This installation is for the "AIR Runtime" which provides the OS-specific groundwork to allow any one HTML or SWF-based AIR application work cross-platform without needing to have completely separate executables or [much, if any] OS-specific programming etc.

In addition to the code in the browser version of the Flash player, AIR adds additional native code to its version of the Flash player (and to JavaScript) to perform additional tasks such as file handling, drag and drop, and window manipulation. These new AIR APIs can still be used with the same mx or fl frameworks used by Flex and Flash to create web based applications.

So basically you just have two players now, one for the browser and one for the deskop. Each are cross-platform and provide similar functionality with the desktop version allowing for more. The same tools used to create web-based SWFs can now (using updates or upcoming releases) be used to also target the desktop version of the player (AIR) with its support of new native features.

	senocular	2007-10-05 #3
	A lot of the basic ideas have been touched upon, and all are pretty right on. Let me see if I can summarize (and some if not most of this will be redundant): SWF files are played by the Flash player. The Flash player needs to be installed on a users computer in order to be able to view SWF files (this usually as a Flash plugin/ActiveX control for the browser). SWF files are created with authoring environments like Flash and Flex SWF files leverage code defined in the Flash player native code to operate Both Flash Authoring and Flex Builder have their own components and code bases from which additional functionality is derived; in Flex, this is the mx 'Flex' framework (Flash now uses code in an fl package). AIR is Adobe's attempt to allow web developers easily create desktop applications using the same technologies used to make web applications (Flash/Flex and HTML/JavaScript). Like the Flash player, AIR needs to be installed on a user's machine in order for an AIR application to run on it. This installation is for the "AIR Runtime" which provides the OS-specific groundwork to allow any one HTML or SWF-based AIR application work cross-platform without needing to have completely separate executables or [much, if any] OS-specific programming etc. In addition to the code in the browser version of the Flash player, AIR adds additional native code to its version of the Flash player (and to JavaScript) to perform additional tasks such as file handling, drag and drop, and window manipulation. These new AIR APIs can still be used with the same mx or fl frameworks used by Flex and Flash to create web based applications. So basically you just have two players now, one for the browser and one for the deskop. Each are cross-platform and provide similar functionality with the desktop version allowing for more. The same tools used to create web-based SWFs can now (using updates or upcoming releases) be used to also target the desktop version of the player (AIR) with its support of new native features.