AIR on Windows 8 "modern"

[quecocinohoy]

Yesterday Adobe sadly updated the Flash Runtimes Roadmap whitepaper.

Basically they said that AIR for Windows 8 “Modern UI” has been cancelled (AIR for Windows 8 "phone" never thought it).

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html

"... Adobe AIR is available and supported for Windows 8 Desktop on x86-based computers. Adobe currently has no plans to support Adobe AIR for Windows 8 Modern UI applications..."

I thought Adobe AIR was the best technology for multi-platform mobile development: iOS, Android, BB10 and Windows 8 Metro ... but if Windows 8 "Metro" and Windows 8 "phone" will not be available ... I would have to try other technologies like:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cdnstudents/archive/2012/12/03/what-cross-platform-development-tools-support...

Very bad day for AIR developers.

I know that Windows 8 "modern" and Windows 8 "phone" still have little market like  BB10. Today is the time to port Adobe AIR to Windows 8, not in one or two years because it will be late... And all other multi-platform mobile technologies has already include Windows 8 "modern" and "phone" in their roadmap ...

Adobe please reconsider it!

[Colin Holgate]

The word "currently" is important. Adobe tend not to say when they know that they will have plans in the future. If it said "Adobe will never…", then that would be more worrying.

[Mark.fromOP]

Colin do you know something we dont know? A will do.

[Colin Holgate]

No, I don't know what their plans are, I was paraphrasing something said by someone on the Flash team.

[Guest]

so to be clear - we now can't hope to be able to make apps for the Win 8 store using Adobe Air? Is that right? It kinda of flys against something Lee Brimelow said in a tweet a little while back.

Also why is this hard for Adobe? Win8 RT has a version of the flash player and Win8 apps can be built with html5 - so joining the two together doesnt sound all that hard.

I'm puzzled and woud love to hear some clear news (good or bad) on this from Adobe

[Guest]

Actually - Ive just gone and looked at the roadmap and I'm more puzzled. It doesn't even mention iOS (except in reference to individual player version feature updates). So if you only looked at the road map you would think that Adobe AIR had nothing to do with iOS, even though that is what a majority of developers are using AIR for.

[Zhenya1919]

Having multiple years of experience with Adobe AIR, I personally don't think anymore it is a good match for my cross platform projects. For many reasons. You might consider it if you have a lot of legacy ActionScript code. But other than that, there are much better options. For both games/non games applications. Support of Windows 8 (RT) is just one more issue on top of everything else. We're planning to start a new cross platform project. And I will strongly advise against using Adobe AIR even though we do have a lot of legacy code. I think we will be better off converting ActionScript code to C#, spending a couple of months on adaptation and using Xamarin for the rest of the development.

[Colin Holgate]

Xamarin looks interesting, and I will check it out. How powerful is its timeline character animation abilities?

[Colin Holgate]

I downloaded and went through some of the tutorial stuff for Xamarin. It could be of use to someone, but even if you are a small comany of under 10 people it would cost $1200 to get started with publishing to the platforms that you can with Flash Pro, and if you're a bigger company it can get in to many thousands of dollars.

I couldn't find anything about timeline animation, and no mention of Windows 8.

[Zhenya1919]

The main drawback about Xamarin is that you need to develop UI layer separately for each of the platforms you support. But to be honest that's the right way to do things in app development world (unless you're developing a game). With Adobe AIR it is pretty hard to develop an app that looks native on each of the platforms. Most likely you will end up with an UI that looks foreign on each of the platform. Again, it is a different story with games.

The price matters less than one might think. A serious company wouldn't care just because it is not that kind of money. An indie developer shouldn't care either because app business pulls much more than that if you're serious about it.

As for Windows 8, Xamarin supports it out of the box. C# is what you use for Windows 8 development anyway. And yes, you will have to develop a Windows 8 UI layer seprately. But if you had a chance to look at Windows 8 RT apps you can tell that you can't just use the same approach as on iOS or Android.

A pure cross platform development only looks good in business plan. But most likely it wouldn't work for you if you develop something else than games. Native development for each platform is too costly even for big companies. I think a hybrid solution like Xamarin is worth considering as an alternative to these two extremes. I'm currently experimenting with Xamarin and so far it looks pretty amazing. Dozen of sample apps, full access to iOS and Android SDK through C# wrappers. And you get a native look and feel in result. It is not yet clear if there are good profiling tools though.

[quecocinohoy]

Thanks everyone,

All other multi-platform mobile technologies has already include Windows 8 in their roadmap ... Today is the time to port Adobe AIR to Windows 8, not in one or two years because it will be late...

If i choose Adobe AIR its for multi-platform, because i dont want to develop 4 versions for 1 app (one for each platfform).

Imagine that they will not withstand ios7, android 5 ... What would happen?

I was a Flex developer and Adobe tried to kill one of the best Frameworks multi-platfform and multi-device... one year later Flex still survive but isnt the same...  sometimes i feel prisoner of Adobe decisions...

Why not ActionScript Next and Flash Player Next?

Why not AIR in Windows 8 "modern" and "phone"?

Why Adobe not releases AIR/Flash runtime as OpenSource?

[rionero_in_volture]

why adobe hates flash?

If adobe will not change many will move on Unity, which has clear ideas!

[flexengineer]

I got some inside information from Adobe, it seems that the show blocker for AIR on Windows 8 is a combination of issues: Adobe does not seem to be motivated to allocate the funds necessary to port AIR to Windows 8 Phone, probably in part due to the still low market share, and in part due to the "cheaper is better" mentality that has rotten the company, but none of the above is written in stone! The matter is however worsen by the fact that Microsoft has some interpreted code requirement that would make AIR on Windows 8 even more costly to implement.

The good news is, I was told that reaching out to our contacts at Microsoft and voice the fact that we need AIR could help trigger some executive pressure, which is also being attempted internally by out friends at Adobe. Furthermore, I was told "if we can get MS to relax the interpreted code requirements and allow our JIT, then we have a legitimate chance". I am conscious of the fact that there are also some performance underlying issues with this, and I am actively assessing them but what all of this tells me is that we just need to open the dialog ourselves, take over some of the talking, and start discussing course of action with the people in charge at both Adobe and Microsoft.

So this is what I suggest: let's stop winning all over social media and on Adobe forums by calling AIR dead or shooting Adobe, which only makes the dark side of the force stronger and undermine our chances to have the company pump more money. Instead, let's reach out to everyone we know at Microsoft and let them know we need AIR on Windows 8 phone.

We have a momentum here, passing the one billion install trees-hold surprised Adobe's itself and the company has observed a "tremendous" increase in AIR adoption. Now is the time to leverage that momentum, we really can get Adobe to pump more money and establish AIR as the de facto standard for cross platform application development once and for all.

This is the social age, peer to peer is the new corporate power. We can win this, we can beat the dark side of the force (Apple, along with Adobe's Indian management), anyone else standing in our way, and re-energizing the bright side of the force at Adobe that truly wants this to succeed (we still have a lot of friends there, especially in the San Francisco offices).

I decided to walk the talk and start trying to do something, they say the world is not changed by opinion but by example, so please check this tweet and help me spread the word by re-tweeting or just posting your own messages to Microsoft:

@joebelfiore my @bizspark #startup @iSocialWatch needs @AIR on W8P 4 newgen #socialapps, how 2 discu...

Let's take it to the cyber streets, let's show the world who runs this show, and let's so do now. Please post and re-post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr and so on. Email your contacts at Microsoft, text your pals, ask for support... do whatever you can!!!

Disclaimer: I did not get the information in this message from Chris, I only CCed him in my tweet as the current product manager for the runtimes. Please do not ask who provided the information, I won't disclose it. You will have to just trust me.

[jaybe75]

Please vote here for Universal Windows app support, and hopefully the Adobe people will listen:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3787892

[Leafcutter]

If Microsoft is looking to move to a single OS across all devices (BBC News - Windows development set to be 'unified' by Microsoft) then maybe AIR support for the entire windows platform across everything is more likely?

[rewb0rn]

I would like to add that it is possible to have your application accepted to the Windows 8 store as a desktop app. It will only be visible on Windows 8 desktop machines though, and you do not have access to the metro tiles. But other than that it works fine. I currently have 3 Adobe Air apps live in the Windows store.

[Leafcutter]

I didn't realise that was possible!  Do you have a link to the store listings?  Is there a guide to follow on how to get an AIR app uploaded or is it pretty straight forward?

[rewb0rn]

Sadly I have not found a way yet to link to my apps on the windows 8 store. Anyway, search for "schafkopf" and you should find 3 apps, they are all done by me. You have to publish them as .exe and sign them with a Verisign certificate, then you can submit the app to the app for desktop program on the Windows Store platform. It takes a while to chew through all the contracts and get your ID verified by Verisign, other than that it's pretty straight forward, and you can follow the tutorial here, it covers all the steps after you published your Adobe Air app as .exe:

Listing your desktop app in the Store - Windows Store for developers - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

[ArmandN]

$500 for a VeriSign certificate is not insignificant.

Considering that desktop apps are only listed in Windows Store, not sold through it, is it worth getting a desktop app listed in the store?

Increased exposure? Increased app site ranking?

I'm already selling my app on my own website, I have my own PayPal-based payment solution. I would get the app in the Windows Store if there would be some real benefits...

poltergeist_, could you please share some insights about Windows Store compared to other stores?

[rewb0rn]

Well it definitely didn't pay off for me, yet. But I make regional German card games, so it may vary for you. I don't remember the certificate to be 500$, though. More around 100$. Maybe they changed it or you are looking at the wrong one?

Some numbers:

ARPU for Android is 2.5 times higher than for Windows store (Keep in mind the payflow on Google Play is much better than in your own Desktop app)

Daily Installs are significantly (more than 20 times) higher on Android than on Windows store

Hope that helps.

Best,

Ruben

[hferreira.80@gmail.com]

I think that what poltergeist_ meant to say is not about verysign, but annual subscription (like Apple does with Mac Store).

For desktop apps you must sign as Company and pay 99 USD/Year: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn374785(v=vs.85).aspx

You don't get your app in the store but a link to another place where you sell the app.

Windows 8 Desktop Store is a very, very refined place. It's a subset of people that have Windows 8 (it's the minority) and then only the ones that use desktop and then only the ones that use the store and only than the ones that are interested in your app!

Only if this store would be available out-of-the-box in Windows 7 could worth.

I believe that would be very difficult recover the 99 USD plus the time spent to put set up your account and link to the store.

For now, don't wast your time and money. In a future with AIR 8 for Metro or Windows 9 Desktop as a Windows 7 replacement, so a bigger market to explore, how knows but not for now!

[marcusidlm]

now that we have this unified platform and adobe is working with microsoft, maybe we will be able to build for windows 10