Web creatives weigh in on Adobe Flash Player 11 and AIR 3

08.10.2011
User experiences are going to get a lot better and online gaming is going to get a lot more exciting with the launch of Adobe Flash Player 11 and AIR3 - that was the view developers as the technology launched this week during the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles.

New attributes in AIR 3 include native extensions, which allow developers to take advantage of existing native code libraries and deep native hardware and OS capabilities, such as sensors (gyroscopes, magnetometers, light sensors, etc), multiple screens, native in-app payments, haptic/vibration control, device status, and Near Field Communications.

"The native extensions are exciting," said Steve Lund of development and consulting company . "We work with a company developing medical applications who are now moving into the mobile space so we'll be able use this. To get on the tablet, to be able to interface directly with devices through the native extensions is pretty exciting for the enterprise customers."

Adobe also introduced a captive runtime facility, which allows developers to automatically package AIR 3 with their applications to simplify the installation process on Android, Windows and Mac OS in addition to Apple iOS.

"It's going to save our clients a lot of money, by allowing us to develop once and deploy to many [platforms]," said Danny Jackson of . "Over the last couple of years we've been developing for iOS and developing for Android and in essence there's not any code that's shared between the two, so you're essentially building it twice. So our clients should be excited and we hopefully should get more work."

"AIR is the application future for Flash content," said RJ Owen, experience planner at . "I think Flash Player now is just to going to be all about video and 3D/2D games on the Web. AIR is where Apps run. They're going to run native on your devices or native on your computer."