The people at Adobe Labs are working hard on one of their most important goals for this year: the development of Adobe Apollo. Well, that was until now, because the project has just been renamed as AIR, which stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime. For those who feel a bit lost, let me remind you that AIR is a cross-platform system runtime that will allow web developers to create rich Internet applications for the desktop, acting as a kind of bridge between online and offline software tools.
Anyway, it seems that AIR is moving steadily onwards: after releasing an alpha version intended for developers, they’ve launched a beta version which you can download from the Adobe Labs site. This new version features full support for HTML and Ajax. Plus, Adobe confirms its aim to launch the final version by the end of this year.
I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the impact of AIR in software development. I think the fact that software giants like Adobe and Microsoft (with their Silverlight project) have put so much effort in this area means that the lines between web and desktop apps get thinner everyday, something which will obviously influence the evolution of software as we now know it. Can you guess what software will be like in one, three, even five years time? I can’t wait to see!
