Concerns About Delivering AIR Applications use Native Processes in AIR 2.0

One of the most wanted requests in AIR Runtime was the capability of communication with the other programs in the operating system that AIR applications will run. Well with AIR 2.0(Athena) finally Adobe decides to add this functionality. But now I do have another concern, but first I want to explain what the new ways of communicating with other programs in AIR 2.0 are.

If you want to open another program in AIR 2.0 all you have to do is calling the openWithDefaultApplication() method of the File Class. Of course you have to specify which file you want to be open. For instance if you want text file to be open with text editor, all you have to do is calling the method and text file will open with assigned default application. This is pretty simple.Of course by this way you cannot communicate with the application that will open, all you do is give a command to open.

If you want to communicate with the other applications in operating systems, than you have to use what call Native Processes. This is of course really good news, because including me lots of people face to problem of how to do that. But there is a small concern, much is I understand if a developer decide to use the Native Processes than developer have to release AIR project as EXE,DMG  or Debian and RPM’s. That means soon as we decide to use the Native Processes, we will no longer be able to use AIR file as published installer. The reason why many people want to use AIR is because it is cross platform. And of course Adobe is not stepping back from this idea, but there is also no reason to use Native Processes and still release the project as AIR file.

It is simple, as a developer when I want to use Native Processes I am aware there are different operating systems and all operating system doesn’t support same features/applications. But why simply detecting that in AIR application and executing code by that decision instead of releasing programs for different operating systems as different installers.

I am sure they have a good explanation for this feature, but as developer I want things to be easy, we are all ready spending so much time for unimportant things than developing, decreasing our productivity is not a good idea.

PS: I based this article on presentation of Christian Cantrell in Adobe Max, as you all know all features are not concrete I might be wrong of my thoughts. In case if you want to watch presentation online here is the link;
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/whats-coming-in-adobe-air-2-

Take Care,
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