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Adobe releases AIR 2, standalone SDK download coming soon
Adobe just released the finished version of Adobe AIR 2, its cross-platform framework for apps. That means developers on Windows, Mac and Linux can deploy their AIR 2 apps today.For users, this means new versions of the AIR apps you love are probably coming very soon... That's assuming that you love any AIR apps at all. AIR is notorious for its instability and memory-hogging, but AIR 2 should go a long way toward fixing that.
We've covered the features of AIR 2 before, but they're worth repeating here. AIR apps can now access files on external mass storage devices, and they support dragging-and-dropping files, multitouch gestures, microphones and more. On top of that, there are the all-important fixes for memory use (apps will use up to 30% less memory now!) that should lead to much better performance. Will they be as fast as native apps? Almost certainly not, but it should be faster than it was, and crash less often.
If you're a developer looking to get your hands on the AIR 2 SDK, it will be part of Adobe CS5 and also available as a standalone download on June 15th.
Comments
6
Subscribe to commentsPonTelonJun 10th 2010 6:54PM
Only AIR apps I use are Pandora and I used to use Tweetdeck. If they really manage to lessen the memory usage, I might start using Tweetdeck again. It's memory hogging was the main reason I stopped using it.
Jacob NJun 10th 2010 7:07PM
In my three consecutive systems, with WinXP, OpenSuSe and Win7 x64, AIR not only hogged memory, but completely devoured it until the system was rendered unusable. Every time, I was all "surely it's better this time." So yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.
berfarahJun 10th 2010 7:31PM
I'm using Grooveshark - fairly sure it dropped from 175MB to 120MB. It's still... really staggeringly high, but I'll take what I can get.
EvenioJun 10th 2010 8:07PM
If I wanted to run what is clearly a Windows app on a different platform (because, let's face it, nobody using AIR develops first for OS X or Linux and then ports elsewhere) and consume all my system resources doing so, I'd open up VMware or Parallels. In the end, AIR is Adobe software and it shows.
stinlen56Jun 11th 2010 1:37AM
I'm not AIR's biggest fan, mostly because I haven't found an application worth using; however, I don't think you know what "port" means. There's no such thing as a Windows AIR app.
EvenioJun 11th 2010 6:50PM
Sorry, I do realize there's no actual "porting" involved, just building. There are certainly Windows AIR apps around, though, if you look at how they're designed.