Adobe adds AIR to cloud

AIR is intended to help software developers create applications that exist in part on a user’s PC or smartphone and in part on servers reachable through the Internet.

To computer users, the applications will look like any others on their device, represented by an icon. The AIR applications can mimic the functions of a Web browser but do not require a Web browser to run.

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“There is a big cloud movement that is building an infrastructure that speaks directly to this kind of software and experience,” said Sean M. Maloney, Intel’s executive vice president.

New York Times - Adobe Blurs Line Between PC and Web - February 25, 2008

AIR has graduated from Adobe Labs, and is now available for free download at

http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

I have to say, I'm not really clear how this is any different from, or better than, Java.
I guess the argument is that it uses web standardsy stuff, so it's easier to program than Java.

Plus it's all well and good to say cloud this and cloud that, for example, but I don't see any indication that AIR provides you with some storage cloud from Adobe that you can use.

I found a posting by a GWT developer that briefly introduces the major competing technologies in this space

Adobe AIR/Apollo vs Ajax vs Gears vs Flash vs Silverlight vs JavaFX vs GWT - June 11, 2007

As well I wonder about the implications for searching.  Our search engines mostly eat text or things that can be converted easily to plain text (Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoints).  You can do a whole fancy site in Flash and to a search engine it will barely exist.  If we move from building text-based web sites to interaction based web apps, how will we ever be able to find anything again?

Comments

[Deepak]

That last point is probably why I was probably not the most excited person about Scribd's efforts. They are blind to search engines and text needs to be visible, some way or another. Perhaps Adobe could do something like making the underlying content visible to search engines in some way. Search is THE most important part of the web. We can't lose it.

This from someone who really likes AIR apps

[Hari]

Couldnt agree more about the fact that if a thing is not searchable..it does not exist. I used to be really up on Ajax and Flash as far as useability was concerened until I realized that when I really needed to find something niche and not on the first few google search result pages ..I relied on a website with a boring cgi style non ajaxy search that definitely had the information.