I haven’t had the opportunity to really fool around with Adobe’s new AIR platform, which is focused on bringing powerful RIA functionality to the desktop, until very recently. I had the opportunity to sit in on a lecture given by an Adobe Certified instructor last week, and within the first 15 minutes, I understood what the hype was all about.

Where shall I begin? Well, first off, AIR is a runtime environment that allows developers to focus on coding for one environment (AIR), and the Adobe VM will take care of the rest. This allows desktop apps coded for AIR to work seamlessly with Windows, Macs, and Linux (soon). To be fair, this sounds oddly reminiscient of Java’s “Write Once; Deploy Anywhere” slogan that we all became so skeptical of. Mostly because, it was too good to be true back then. And it really ended up being “Write Once; Debug Anywhere”

But AIR seems to be a lot more than just buzz though. First off, developers have the ability to utilize HTML, JavaScript, Flash, or Flex, within their AIR applications. Within hours, one can have a working desktop app from the WebApp they started with! And most importantly, contrary to my expectation, so far, AIR apps seem to run the same in whatever OS that you are running them in.

Here are the five key advantages that I have seen in AIR so far:

1. Native OS Functionality in MacOS and Windows. You are able to utilize all of the complex stuff that makes applications useful in both Windows and MacOS. In Windows, your AIR apps can access the system tray and taskbar seamlessly. In MacOS, you are able to even go as far as making icons bounce! I imagine that doing that stuff without AIR would not be any fun, and that doing it in BOTH OS’s would be a horrible experience without a seamless platform to make it easy.
2. Super-Easy installations for end-users, with trusted installs. When a user has the AIR platform installed, it’s really easy to install an AIR application (and easy to uninstall it, too!) My initial concern was the broad penetration of AIR. We know that Flash player is a fine platform to develop for because so many people use it; will AIR have the same appeal? I think it probably will, with a little time. Particularly because you will be able install the AIR platform directly from the web browser.
3. Native File access! You can access files on the hard drive for reading in data (even byte-array style if you wanted something like binary data) as well as saving data to a local machine. That makes a killer method for storing changes to the database when the user is currently disconnected from the internet. The only tricky piece is going to be handle the differences in paths across platforms — such as slashes and that whole c-drive vs. root thing.
4. SQL(ite). Admiteddly, this is the feature that I know the least about. But, the newest version of AIR is integrated with an SQLlite database that allows the user to run database commands against a local database on the user’s machine. It doesn’t give you the more advanced features of DB’s, such as stored procedures, but you are able to all kinds of data storage and retrieval locally. This could be particularly useful if you are not extending an existing web-application to the destktop, and are creating a desktop app from scratch that needs data-access.
5. Adobe’s Amazing RIA Platforms. I suppose that this last point is the most most indirect advantage of the 5. The concept of a unified desktop (web)app development environment is appealing enough in itself. But it is worth mentioning that the this whole thing is sweetened by the fact that Flex seriously rocks! Let’s also not forget that the newer Flex 3 has a lot of promising features that will prove to be excellent. Flash CS3 also has a whole lot that it offers over previous versions as well. Finally, Flex Live-Cycle DataServices and the newer (cheaper :)) BlazeDS both provide super-powerful data functionality. Probably the best cherry on top there can be to such a platform.

Basically, AIR rocks. There are a lot of reasons that is stands to really change the game of web apps and their extensions to the desktop. We’ve seen some neat apps spring up on the web, but I think it’s the tip of the iceberg here. Stay tuned, and you’ll see some killer apps from us in AIR