Monday, March 19th, 2007
Adobe Apollo Alpha Release
Category: Announcements
, Adobe
Adobe has now released Apollo into the wild with its alpha release.
This is far from the final version, but does give everyone an early chance to play with the new platform.
You can grab the runtime and the SDK for Mac and Windows to start building.
There are sample applications to get inspiration from, and you can watch the DEMO 2007 talk.
Now is the time to push Adobe in directions that you want them to go. How native do you need Apollo to be (range: “nothing. Flash is just fine” to “let me write to my device drivers damn it”)?
Adobe has the ear of the Flash world, but let’s make sure they hear about our needs… from the Ajax world.
3.8 rating from 24 votes
Well, it’s not really that thing I was waiting for. As I see, the XML description language gone, and it’s quite different from the earlier releases. Anyway, it’s interesting that the YUI-Ext is working on this platform, and may other interesting ideas are behind. Let’s discover it.
What I’m really interested in, if I can create messages like “new email” arrived in Outlook/Thunderbird, if I can add icons to the taskbar, etc.
Programming in Flash what I’m not really interested in. It needs a quite different setup that I have now for web development, the tools are not free and are just a few of them, they’re not really platform independent, too. As I see, more or less running Flash applications natively was possible earlier, too, it’s nothing really new. The interesting thing would be writing desktop programs with HTML or other ML, JavaScript, without compiling. If it will be possible, and won’t be hard, I’ll be interested in this environment.
Wondy!! I am installing now!!!
a new world is dawning!!
let’s see wot this puppy can do!
ok tried it… made a couple of apps.. here’s my opinion..
andras has somewhat of a point there. this really is, nothing fanstically new. Flash projector attempted to bring web technologies onto the desktop.. but of course, u have to have a good knowledge of actionscript and probably, a creative eye.
in apollo, u have the runtime layer, and the html/flex application built on top. everything runs within that window… like a normal browser. sure, it’s called a desktop application, but really, it just takes the place of a browser.
along with wat andras said, i would like to see more integration into the desktop environment, similar to what google desktop has. taskbar icons, system popups.. something more natural to the OS.
by the way what is the answer to the spam question- What four letter word starting with ‘A’ is the topic of this blog??
there isn’t a four letter word in this topic!!
Now that Apollo beta is out, I ported my XULRunner-based apps to run on AIR:
http://jinsync.com/
“That Gmail.app” and “jin’sync 30b” — yours for the downloading, and cross-platform to boot.
~L
Shaun, it’s “AJAX”. ;)
made a couple of apps, found it hard at first to use, after a good read of the docs was much easier, i think its okay for an alpha release, i played about with the XMLHttpRequest a bit loading some php data from the server, i would like to see clickable links inside the application to load if its detected as online..
The online / offline detection is quite nice, very sharp and to the point and easy to manipulate as its 2 functions or so ..
Will be interesting to see where they go from here, i will certainly be continuing to tinker and play about with it.
/Jester
P.S.. i dont see alot of ajax in it atm to be honest, its more geard for flex and actonscript/flash .. i hope this changes as not everyone codes flash and it would make the web a boring place to code in if everyone did !
Well done Adobe for the concept but im sure we will see very very open source easier apps like ths in the not to distant future, either way nice app for an early release !
Also, been looking for ways to stream media (as this would be about the best use for theis type of app - With all the `On Demand` hype about at the mo and cant find a suitable way of doing this, maybe they will include this in a later release) .. appologies if it is included and i simply havent found it yet !!..
Medias Tried:
Flash video
Youtube object
Mp3
Don’t miss the Adobe Apollo’s Videos at the http://video.onflex.org/ — there’s some interesting demos already and more to come!
>P.S.. i dont see alot of ajax in it atm to be honest, its more geard for flex and actonscript/flas
Yeah. The next pre-release build (beta), which have much stronger HTML support and docs.
mike chambers
mesh@adobe.com
Just use flex. IMO, Adobe should be spending $$ on maturing Flex instead of creating more hybrid platforms.
Gosh, the Apollo-FAQ gives me the creeps. Leverage this, laverage that, what is wrong with the verb “use”? Is it considered uncool in marketing-speek?
/me is away, leveraging the microwave to heat up a snack.
For anyone interested and concerned with Apollo development a new forum has been launched just for the community, take a look and join in on this new technology–be one of the first to soak it up:
http://www.codeapollo.com
Very interesting to see Ext running in a desktop app. I wish I knew how it all worked!
Some more html/javascript docs would be nice aswell, its all a bit to geared toward flex at the mo, and i dont have time to learn a new language !!!!
We at Ucompass.com, Inc., (a LMS/CMS vendor) are using Apollo technology to make it easier for online students to do their work. The Educator Desktop is the first commercial e-Learning application to be built on top of Adobe’s innovative Apollo platform. Attaching files to assignments is often one of the more troublesome tasks for new online students since normally files have to be uploaded within the confines of the web browser. With the Educator Desktop, the online classroom interface and the student’s desktop computer are one in the same, enabling students to simply drag and drop desktop files to a target assignment. Click to view info or to contact Ed Mansouri regarding the Educator Desktop Apollo app and other Apollo-based initiatives.
Apollo is not going to be the platform for SAP’s UI Muse - what a loss for Apollo from becoming a software used by millions of business employees. SAP is using its own C++ client - based on Netweaver Business Client. Check
here
thanks for the information