AIR 2.7 just got available at labs.adobe.com (Windows and Mac Desktop versions, Android version will follow later). The new features include a analytics API ("Media Measurement"), the Acoustic Echo Cancellation known from the Flash Player 10.3 beta version and enhancements to the HTMLLoader API. The release date for AIR 2.7 is scheduled for Q2 2011.

Dirk.

Fresh stuff for Linux folks: AIR 1.5 has been released! More info:

http://blogs.adobe.com/air/

Dirk.

Wow - this was just announced by Kevin Towes:

Dirk.

My colleague Christian yesterday started the Flex User Group Hannover (FXUG Hannover). Check it out here (sorry, German language version only)

Dirk.

Just a reminder: Sven and I are still looking for some questions for our "Flex and Adobe AIR Freestyle Hacking" session at MAX Milano.

Dirk.

Ok, this will be fun :) At this years MAX Europe in Milan Sven Claar and I will be hosting the "Flex and Adobe AIR Freestyle Hacking" session.

The idea is pretty simple: people in the audience will ask technical/coding questions concerning Flex, AIR and related technology (like BlazeDS, LC, CD etc) and we will try our best to answer them live on stage - no props, no tricks. So there's no real agenda but we promise to show a lot of insider tips and tricks and do some seeeerious hacking there.

Of course, everything depends on the amount (and quality) of the questions you ask - to allow for a good start, Sven and I ask you to send us some questions YOU would like to ask, no matter if you make it to MAX Europe or not. We just need some input to get started during the session so the audience then knows what type of questions we're looking for (of course, we'll give credits for every submission we'll pick!).

So, please feel free to add comments here - and make sure to join our Freestyle Hacking session :)

Dirk.

In a current AIR project we need to ship customized versions of the same code base for different customers. Of course we don't want to compile a new AIR file for every new customized application as this would make maintenance and deployment pretty hard - so we looked for other options.

The customization we need to apply for each customer consists of two things: a new CSS stylesheet with styles and skins and customized ResourceBundles for certain UI elements (error messages, HTTP links, label text etc.). The CSS requirement be easily solved by using runtime CSS styles, i.e. SWF files that get loaded into the application dynamically - so for every customer we create a new CSS-SWF file. Loading ResourceBundles at runtime is also possible since Flex 3 when you compile down the resources to SWF files as well.

The process of creating these two SWF files per customer is not that hard but it just seemed too much work when actually all the application should need to is to load ONE single SWF file containing bith the customized ResourceBundles AND the customized CSS style.

So in the end I created a simple prototype that is actually capable of loading a single SWF file at runtime that hosts the customized CSS and ResourceBundle data. The thing is that Flex 3 under the hood uses the same mechanism to load ResourceBundle SWFs and CSS SWFs - they are actually plain Modules. So I created a new Module, put the ResourceBundle Metadata and a Style block into it, compiled it to a SWF (using the -load-externs switch on the compiler) and loaded it into the main AIR application After the SWF was loaded the new CSS Stylesheet and the ResourceBundles were applied correctly! Look Ma, only one SWF :)

Dirk.

FYI, we just updated our Adobe training offerings and replaced the Flex 2 courses with the latest Flex 3 courses. Also, we're now offering the official AIR course ("Building Desktop Applications with Flex 3 and Air") and added the new Cairngorm course to our portfolio.

Of course, if these generic courses do not fit your requirements, we're still offering custom on-site consulting and training.

Dirk.

Wow! Adobe just announced to bring out an Open Source (LGPL) version of the LiveCycle Data Services ES product, codenamed "BlazeDS", a first beta version is available at labs.adobe.com! According to the FAQ, BlazeDS will contain the HTTP and AMF3 over HTTP based messaging features known from the full LCDS product, i.e. Remoting, Messaging and Data Management. RTMP is not mentioned, so obviously the protocol/transport will not be open sourced and probably there will no be RTMP endpoints in the BlazeDS J2EE component - still, this is great stuff of course :)

Also, has released the complete AMF3 specification - and this is a great move IMHO. There were rumours about this for quite a while now and I'm sure the community will love to see that!

Oh, and btw: Flex 3 Beta 3 and Air Beta 3 were also released :)

Dirk.

The subject says it all: is AIR something that will be around for the next 2-4 years and not just a cool developer toy? Actually, I think so - but currently I need some real good selling points for a project that could be done with AIR but the customer is rather sceptical about the technology and the general roadmap.

The project is a strategic enterprise project so the customer really needs some kind of safety for the planned investment and especially some indications that AIR won't dropped or discontinued in the next 2 years (which is a valid point I think).

What pro-AIR arguments do you know?

Dirk.