I recently start learning Adobe AIR . AIR is a platform that allows you to run your web application on your desktop too. It seems there are two major ways to implement AIR: Flex or JavaScript. I downloaded a free online book from here, and I used Aptana for the IDE, but you can basically build AIR application with your favorite text editor & command-line.

After my Hello-World experience, I tried to port our online AJAX dictionary. I could translate this web application in 25 minutes. In terms of coding, only one part was changed, which is url for XMLHttpRequest method. It was relative path to send request, but I changed this to absolute url since it will send requests from your desktop. This was easy, and rest of changes are window width, removing links & unnecessary scripts.

Click here to download the .air application. Please install the runtime from here.

Installing Application

Screen Shot

Additional Note:

In order to distribute AIR application, you need following MIME type in your server for .air extention.

application/vnd.adobe.air-application-installer-package+zip

Japanese characters are OK in AIR, but the font lost the sharpness. Maybe it's default font or rendering engine of its browser.

Labels: ajax