When Mozilla released Prism, I started looking at that, from the user’s point of view of course. As a user, I say again. Not as a developer. Prism is of little interest to developers. It is just a slimmed-down browser for running individual websites or web apps as if they were desktop apps. This type of software is called an SSB, or Site Specific Browser. Fluid (fluidapp.com) is another example, and one which I currently use, instead of Prism, because it runs natively and has more features, I use it as a user. Not as a developer.
I use Fluid (and would use Prism if I were running Windows) for running Gmail in its own app. I have five Google Apps accounts on different domains, and I run each in its own app. Pretty neat.

Can I do that with AIR? No.
Google could develop a Google Mail app which uses AIR as a runtime environment, or in fact any developer could create a Gmail-specific-browser based on the AIR runtime. But a non-developer end-user can’t.

Now, back to the beginning. I was investigating AIR, as a developer, because I thought it would be a neat way to develop desktop apps using my existing webdev skills.
I was simultaneously investigating Prism, an unrelated technology, as a user.
Fine, right? Yep. I had nothing against either Adobe or Mozilla, either before or after reading the Mozilla article. And I don’t believe that the Mozilla article was intended to insult Adobe. I certainly didn’t read it that way.

Then I scrolled down and read the comments. And I came to your comment, Mike. And I came and read your post here. And I thought to myself, “what a prat”! You were just spamming Mozilla’s blog to advertise your own, unrelated, product. I don’t know you, Mike, and I don’t come across anything by you often, but I had heard of you and respected you. But this issue just threw me off. I no longer wanted to be involved with you or with Adobe. I stopped bothering with AIR. And I haven’t bought any Adobe products since, though I never made a conscious decision not to.

You moan that not enough of the comments are directly answering your original post, but when one does you don’t answer it. You never answered MP, above. Why not? He made the most relevant, sensible, comment on this page, and you never answered him.

Mike, think before you act.

Your comments seem more like evangalist marketing defense strategy than reality. According to mozilla, Prism is a way to run web-apps by making them look and feel more desktopy. Air is a web-app creator-helper that can break from the browser to a desktopy feel. Being technical enough to know the difference but not the execution I think it is worth someone like yourself who is plainly attached to adobe, to investigate how this is implemented differently, rather than getting all philosophical and symatics focused. Mozilla are not trying to put down Adobe’s product but help knowledgable users differentiate. They can then decide, OK prism is not for me because I want to develop something more integrated and fancy or yes I want prism because I already have this intranet web app that I dont want to have to change too much but that I want to access in a more natural.

All the difference lies in this sentence: “Web developers don’t have to target it separately”

AIR is a proprietary platform people can build on using an SDK. AIR only incidentally works with existing web applications. Web developers have to target it separately, learn a proprietary framework and write an application within the constraints of the EULA if they are to compete with others. It’s meant to lock up the web, much like Flash did. If you can recall, Flash wasn’t available for 64-bit systems because of Adobe’s incompetence to compile it and their adamant behavior to keep it locked. AIR isn’t even available for Linux now, forget 64-bit systems.

Mozilla Prism, on the other hand, simply runs existing web applications more efficiently. It has no SDK and requires no web developers to be aware that it even exists. I doubt they will even create a framework to allow people to integrate more tightly with Prism and behave more like a desktop application- That requires standardization. After the war is over, someone will propose a W3C standard to integrate RIA more tightly with desktop applications. THAT will be a revolution- not proprietary shit like AIR.

– Sorry if I’ve been very harsh, but I hope this drives my point home

With Adobe Air, the application developer needs to create an Adobe Air application for the end user to use. Thus, the end user is left at the mercy of the web app developer again.

With Prism the end user can turn any web app into a desktop type application. This is the beauty of Prism.

Well, I think nobody told it is evil. It is sad that in Mozilla blog you try to convince people that it is a useless project. At least it looked like that for me. :-(

I think this is about having someting similar based on HTML what is an open/free/whatever standard. I agree that flash is a cool stuff, but it is also like an alien code, not part of the HTML, something what you have to embede, and hardly controll from outside.

Though not all functions would be available but i believe some fundamental features should be integrated. Such database connection(since ADOBE AIR ships with SQLITE by default), splash page window creation and integration, window skin and many more. This feature will enable more designers and developers to easily embrace the technology and the resultant growth could be enormous. Mike, please pass my wishlist to the adobe air team.

The Adobe AIR can a learn a lot from this solution that has been around ahead of AIR. Please check this link:http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?area=products&product=studio.

Thanks

give us a break.

anomalous

onimous

After reading Mozilla article and your post, I have to 99.5% agree with you and if I would be Adobe employee I would get probably upset even more than you did …. i’m just surprised you can keep up with the responses.

maybe someone will hit me with a stone, but I have no problem with open or closed software if it does it’s job. Adobe technologies served me well and I don’t see them as evil because I don’t get the source code. Why “open software” developers don’t see “closed developers” just as developers? Do I hate Microsoft for not giving open source code for Vista to the community? hmmm I like Bill Gates for giving big bucks to charity. I guess I’m evil.

Same here but I’m sure Adobe will fix it!