Adobe AIR has held the headlines in the publishing world this year, but even developers and publishing professionals underestimate its real capabilities .We've heard a lot this year about Adobe AIR, the technology formerly known as Apollo. While a lot of people have heard about it, few can actually name what it is: A runtime platform for rich-internet apps, which in somewhat oversimplified, plain English boils down to an "custom offline player for Flash that doesn't need a browser."
The majority of end-users of Acrobat and PDF in offices across the country probably won't notice instances of AIR crossing their desk when they occur, just as most can't tell whether their favorite Webmail or online word-processing tool is written on Java, Ajax, or some other competing platform, says Rick Brown, Adobe director of Acrobat product management.
Applications that run on AIR can interact with PDFs, such as forms that can populate themselves with data based on what a user enters into fields, or interactive catalogs.
One Adobe client, says Adobe group manager for AIR product marketing Adrian Ludwig, wrote an custom AIR app to put a straightforward, desktop-based interface to his company's procedure for electronically signing and delivering PDF documents into its workflow.
"That's the kind of thing we're seeing people building using AIR," Ludwig says. "Very task-oriented, targeted applications that take advantage of the infrastructure and platform that we've built around PDF."
Flash originated, Ludwig says, as a tool to overcome browser limitations, such as displaying motion and sound. AIR, he adds, helps overcome the browser itself by porting Flash and all of its interactive features that have evolved over the years into little, custom standalone apps that run online or off.
The genesis of AIR predates Adobe's 2005 acquisition of Macromedia.
"Just before the Adobe acquisition, [Macromedia] was saying 'We think that we understand all the things a browser can do, and there are some things we'd like to do that it wouldn't be appropriate for Flash to add in the context of a browser,'" Ludwig says. Things like flexible interface design and access to data on local hard drives—which, in a Web-browser context offer security and trust issues.
As such, most AIR apps that work with PDFs so far, Ludwig says, are used inside the enterprise—and inside their firewalls.
Acrobat 9 (and Reader) boasts a Flash runtime that can play files embedded in PDFs. It also features souped-up PDF Portfolios that gives end-users—most of them nonprogrammers working in general office or graphic design environments—access to audio and motion effects for their PDFs that previously were the purview of developer/programmer types.
Such features help Acrobat users create PDFs that are more than just electronic versions of paper documents—more flashy and interactive presentations and reports that have no paper equivalent.
AIR raises possibilities for future versions of Acrobat. Although Brown stopped short of saying that AIR—or perhaps AIR runtime apps performing features or services—would be implemented in Acrobat, he did expand upon its potential:
"As needs around portable content evolve, we now—through the virtue of AIR—have a broader palette of technologies to apply toward that problem," Brown says. "There may be things that AIR can enable us to do in the context of Acrobat or PDF that we can't with the Flash runtime, and so we would certainly consider that."
