Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Category: Adobe
, Books
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>Mike Chambers and the
Adobe AIR crew have generously released the
Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for JavaScript Developers Pocket Guide (Amazon) under a creative commons license.
They have given us an electronic copy available for download for free, here.
The pocket guide covers:
- Introduction to AIR
- Getting Started with AIR development
- Working with JavaScript and HTML within AIR
- AIR Mini Cookbook
- Command line tools
- Aliases
Everyone who shows up for the free bus tour will get a paper copy of the book.
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download link goes to feedburner…it does not work :(
very useful. Thanks for the info.
well, it did not work before…now it does ::puzzled::
Given that Adobe really wants developers to start developing stuff with AIR (aka Apollo), not entirely surprising, but it’s great to see a company stand behind their product with professionally-produced documentation for developers. Thanks!
Were they expecting somebody to pay for this?! I guess they are new to this type of products and don’t know how it works
>Were they expecting somebody to pay for this
Umm… the book is released under a creative commons license, AND you can download it from this very blog post.
Some people like to have the printed material to read, but for those that don’t care about that, you can download the PDF for free.
So, Im not sure exactly what we “don’t know how it works”. You can download the book for free, or you can buy a printed copy. That seems pretty flexible to me.
mike chambers
mesh@adobe.com
I just don’t get the purpose of this post specially the word “generously” in the first line.
You guys have created a PDF file that explains your own product, then you are bragging about it that is free? hell it better be free!
Maybe you are confusing this book, with the actual runtime documentation.
You can find the documentation for developing for the beta runtime at:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR:Documentation
This weblog post is about a book, published by O’Reilly, which, unlike most books published, has been released under an open license, which among other things, has allowed Ajaxian.com to post it.
Hope that helps…
mike chambers
mesh@adobe.com
First open sourcing Flex, giving us free development tools for AIR, releasing flash 9 for Linux and now a free book. Somebody pinch me, this is too good to be true. Thank you Adobe.
Mirror:
http://www.codeapollo.com/showthread.php?p=3620#post3620
Why doesn’t the documentation acknowlegde it’s using SQLite?
I don’t understand. Why use this and not Google Gears?
“Why doesn’t the documentation acknowlegde it’s using SQLite?”
because, in the current beta version it is not in there. The product isn’t in a 1.0 release yet, so a lot of features and bug fixes still have to be worked out and added/edited in the documentation
“I don’t understand. Why use this and not Google Gears?”
Can’t access the file system from Google Gears. This is more comparable, from what I can tell, to the .NET Framework. It lets you run HTML based applications outside of the browser.
Thanks a lot :)
For clarification,
The AIR Beta does include the SQLite database, and it is called out on the section that pertains to using it (page 113). The content is really more about how SQLite is exposed via JavaScript than SQLite proper. There’s more than enough documentation on that already.
To the question about why not Google Gears…
I’d suggest that depends on the requirements of your application. AIR is more than about just having a local database. Consider features like native windows (i.e. custom chrome, modal, always on top, etc.), native drag-and-drop to/from the operating system and other applications, native clipboard support to/from the operating system and other applications, native menus that appear where they should on that operating system, native context menus (not yet baked in the Beta), and more. These features are all about allowing developers familiar with web development technologies to extend their application to include a desktop presence.
Just to be clear here too, I’m not suggesting that every application needs a desktop presence. There are applications that warrant this type of behavior however, such as iTunes/iTMS and eBay’s San Dimas project (http://www.sandimasproject.com).
Two cents,
Kevin Hoyt
khoyt@adobe.com
If you get bored with the examples from the book and are craving more examples, it looks like one of the authors has expanded on the list and beefed up the existing examples: http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/2007/06/27/35-air-examples-for-javascript-developers/
Dion, the feed link doesn’t include the domain and bauks on downloading from a reader.
does the ADBE marketing dept know ‘air’ means shit/nonsense in common slang?
IMO there aren’t any good reasons to use AIR. Developers are already mixing HTML and Flash for years so not really an advantage here. Mixing HTML inside Flash totally kills the point of using HTML, basically it is a Flash based web browser that is loaded inside another browser. This would render all my browser optimization/ extensions / accessibility features useless (e.g. Firefox search as you type feature). Why not just release a Flash based web browser and see how far you can get?!
Also if somebody wants to write a desktop application why not using a mature OO Framework such as .NET or J2EE where possibilities are endless and you can reach far beyond AIR runtime. Probably AIR works for users who don’t know other than HTML/JS but for professional Object Oriented applications it is not an option.
Mish, I’ll give you my reason for using AIR: it allows me, a web application developer, to create desktop applications using the technologies I already know–HTML, CSS, and JavaScript or Flex (which admittedly I’m still learning).
If I’m building an application that is primarily designed to be used on-line, but I want to give users the option of viewing or storing data locally when they’re not connected to the Internet, it doesn’t make sense for me to code the on-line part of the app using web technologies and then code the smaller desktop portion using an entirely different language.
Flex, by the way, is very OO.
it is useful for helpping more web developers join AIR.
The book is pretty useful for someone to get started on Adobe AIR technology. See my full review of the book at http://ashishkprasad.blogspot.com/2007/07/book-review-adobe-integrated-runtime.html
An excerpt from the review:
“….Frankly I have not played with all the examples, just a handful; however, I found them to be useful. I must admit that the very first example “Hello World†was a bit frustrating to deal with, as the sample contained some typo. As we all know Adobe AIR was formerly known as Apollo, it seems that this sample was half-converted to the new naming convention. It would have saved an hour of my time troubleshooting and hunting through the forum if “ApolloHelloWorld.html†would have been mentioned as “AIRHelloWorld.html†on page 30. Anyway, I have noted it here just in case someone else needs it. Besides, the typo I think the book has also been silent on other features of a desktop application such as threading, inter-process communication or ability to access registry settings. I am thinking none of these are supported…..”
This is excellent. Thank you, Mike Chambers & gang for the excellent resource that I’ve been searching non-stop for. AIR really raises the bar, IMO. Great new things are coming & I love it.
Keep up the fantastic work!
Great work guys, thanks for the reference and the download.
I found a great shopping site named Couponalbum.com where I get more discounted offers related to E-books from many major stores……!!
excellent work guys. thank you so much
Great book, printed it, read it, perfect resource!!!
Very good book. It is also very good to be freely downloadable on the net
great book, thanks a lot.
Why should we use this though and not Google Gears? I don’t see what this saves, but maybe I am missing the point.
Download link is not working …
Yeah, download link is broken. Could you please fix it?
Great book. Thanks for sharing it.
Not that I don’t like free but I’m just wondering how one benefits from giving it out for free…
I think it is a great book but I wonder how does it differentiate with other e-books like this. Ah.. Nevermind me as long as its free, I’ll just find it out myself. lol. Thanks by the way!
Site was updated.. And now I am unable to locate the download link. Anyone care to point me to the same download link that is free? Thanks in advance!
Great book. Thanks a lot for this Link.
Thanks a lot. It is very helpful. BTW, google it and you will find other sites that offer this for download if the downloader does not work.
Thanks for the info &
Thanks for sharing it
Very usefull Info. Thanks !
Thanks for the info!
Is this free e-book still available? I am getting a 404 error page when clicking on the pdf fille.
Very good book. Thanks for sharing! I will download it.
Is this free e-book still available? I am getting a 404 error page when clicking on the pdf fille.
I will download it as i do believe it is a valuable book. Thanks for that!
thanks again for sharing your knowledge!
Is this e-book still available?