What are your biggest issues with Adobe AIR?
What are your biggest issues, bugs and annoyances with Adobe AIR? I am specifically looking for input on both developers bugs, and end user bugs. I am not looking for input on features you would like added (Ill do that in another post).
We already have a pretty good idea of the main issues (based on the forums, bug reports, blogs, testing and twitter), but your comments here will be another useful data point.
As usual, you can always submit the issues directly to the AIR team here.
So, post your biggest Adobe AIR annoyances, bugs and issues in the comments. Keep comments on topic.
No automatic gzip decompression support for http services that have gzipped responses.
Danny Patterson
6 Aug 08 at 8:26 am
still no flash inside htmlLoader inside a transparent nativeWindow
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-15033
Ta
6 Aug 08 at 8:52 am
With the windows redistributable ’sidecar’ installation, if the user uninstalls AIR Runtime then the installer will no longer run and gives message about damaged air file rather than re-installing AIR. Installing AIR from standalone installer does fix the issue once this has occurred.
Inability to suggest a file name when saving a file (This may be ignorance on my part, however. Even if not it’s probably more of a feature request)
Inability to launch one file browse operation directly from event.select handler of a previous one is a little bit of an annoyance, or at least unexpected.
Jim Hayes
6 Aug 08 at 8:54 am
It would be nice to have USB and serial port support in Adobe AIR :)
Gustavo Perez
6 Aug 08 at 9:03 am
1. Warning logo during installation of apps may be a bit overly frightening to users. Especially those who are not used to such warning when installing other desktop apps. Consider a “yellow” cautionary color instead of “red” themed warning.
2. Would love some tools within Flex Builder for working with SQLite in an AIR app. (Just basic, create DB, create/edit/del table, field, etc.)
3. Getting AIR files to download properly on hosted environments outside my control can be challenging. As the MIME type isn’t recognized. Doubt there is anything we can do on that front except give it time to be embraced.
4. Allow a hybrid project in Flex Builder. Let me be able to have both AIR and Flex apps in the same project.
Those are just the insights I have off the top of my head.
- The Saj
Jason The Saj
6 Aug 08 at 9:09 am
DragManager - There’s a different one for Flex and AIR. I’d like to be able to use them both in the same app since they function differently. Give me a NativeDragManager for dragging in/out of the app, but let me use the Flex DragManager for dragging within.
I’ll second this one from above:
4. Allow a hybrid project in Flex Builder. Let me be able to have both AIR and Flex apps in the same project.
Marc Hughes
6 Aug 08 at 9:14 am
I’d like to second Jason’s #2 point about some basic tools within FB for working with SQLLite.
John
6 Aug 08 at 9:17 am
It’s on the border between a bug and a feature, but I’d also love to see HTTP compression support.
Mark
6 Aug 08 at 9:18 am
A better garbage collector or more control on the garbage collection mechanism.
I am especially referring to the add/remove child in UI containers.
With the current implementation memory consumption tends to grow a lot and UI elements, even if unreferenced, tend to stay in the memory.
funkyboy
6 Aug 08 at 9:36 am
I think my biggest issue is no supported way of integrating with native code. Sure we can do all sorts of hacks involving socket communication, but it would be nice if we could at least bundle it all together in a single .AIR file, and launch the native code from within our AIR app.
David R
6 Aug 08 at 9:39 am
Just a quick reminder, but Im not looking for input on feature requests in this post.
mike chambers
mesh@adobe.com
mikechambers
6 Aug 08 at 9:41 am
Hi! I think a big issue is the painfull instalation and update for developing in flash… ¡¡¡no good!!! it should be super easy to install (and update)…
greats from Argentina
nico!
nico
6 Aug 08 at 9:51 am
At least on Mac OS X, several of the AIR apps I use will get stuck in the background of the window system, and will not return to the foreground even if you click on it…. you have to switch away from the app with Cmd-Tab and come back to it before you can bring it to the foreground. I thought it was just Twirhl, but I’ve seen it on a couple of others now too (Pandora springs to mind)… so that leads me to believe it may be in the runtime.
Brian Panulla
6 Aug 08 at 10:08 am
When I run an AIR app, and it shows this message:
“This application requires a version of the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) which is no longer supported. Please contact the application author for an updated version.”
It would be nice to include the web address of the application author because now I literally have to start with a fresh Google search if I ever want to use that AIR app again.
No other desktop application in the world turns me away so helplessly just because something needs upgrading.
Harry B. Garland
6 Aug 08 at 10:08 am
I tried to create an HTML/javascript application with a frameset with one XML file (which uses XSLT to transform to HTML) and 2 other HTML file, but it doesn’t seem to work; however it does work when I launch SAFARI or FIREFOX locally. Is it a security feature?
Stephane
6 Aug 08 at 10:15 am
I have run into a few Mac bugs, some that only happen on the iMacs in our office.
When I load jpgs into mx:Image they display fine on the PC but are almost completely black on Macs. All you can see is about 2 pixels on either side of the image.
I’m also having problems calling javascript functions in the HTMLLoader on iMacs. Everything works fine on my PC but on the iMacs nothing happens.
Overall, the experience on the Macs feels poorer as well. Everything seems more sluggish, the busy cursor seems to take a long time to show up, file upload progress seems to only be 0 or 100% - progress bars don’t seem to be updating when uploading files.
I’ve only just begun exploring most of these Mac problems so I’m light on details right now.
So in general whatever you can do to make sure that AIR is truly cross platform would be awesome because I was very disappointed when I first ran the app I’ve been working on for so long on a Mac and so many things were broken.
Rick Mason
6 Aug 08 at 10:22 am
1) Problems installing AIR, especially on Mac laptops.
2) Installation warning dialog is too scary. Would Adobe put that same warning up when installing Flash Player or even AIR? What’s good for the goose…
3) The DragManager dragImage is almost always corrupted on Mac.
Matt Giger
6 Aug 08 at 10:37 am
The security limitations while loading external data into a SWF that’s loaded into an AIR application (eg: if we load and existing SWF into a generic AIR environment and let the SWF interact with the AIR app and through that with the filesystem) It looks like the loaded SWF it’s running in a different security zone then the AIR application itself: it gives all kinds of issues with local files.
Since AIR runs as a full desktop executable it might as well give total, complete, and utter security clearance to anything that’s being loaded into it. Then it’s up to the developer to expose (or deny) the hazardous functionality from the AIR app to the external SWF’s. Maybe just file that under: ‘better interaction with normal SWFs’.
Besides that: you need admin rights to install the runtime, which is annoying. And maybe you could bundle the AIR runtime with the Flash Player?
Macaca
6 Aug 08 at 10:37 am
Biggest issue: You have to install the Runtime.
exe = you don’t have to install any runtime. It just works (on PC that is).
For the presentations I have to create, we go with EXE. No need to write files or read the system. If there was that need, there’s MDM Zinc! Still no runtime to install!
Paul Trani
6 Aug 08 at 10:52 am
The need of administrator rights for installing the runtime. I know AIR is targeted for full desktop applications, but there is quite a market for small widgets in the marketing domain. They don’t need databases or rights for writing in all locations on the local computer. It would be cool to have a solution for this domain. So we don’t have to use the Yahoo Widgets engine anymore.
Sven
6 Aug 08 at 11:03 am
AIR should have AIRService class (File and SQLConnection class together, like E. Feminella did) and should use mx.rpc.Responder for responses not flash.net.Responder (for example HTTPService method send() returns instance of AsyncToken which holds mx.rpc.Responder, SQLStatement.execute should be the same)
And yes, better support for generating SQL queries. I’ve developed one project (http://asqlib.googlecode.com) of this kind which supports only the most used sql commands, and am now developing a new one (http://assqliteutils.googlecode.com) which should cover 99.9% of the air sqlite power.
If anyone is willing to participate just contact me on my googlecode username at gmail.com.
But that should come in the original package (code would be tested, less buggy, more powerful <– I don’t have that much free time).
Thanks
mloncaric
6 Aug 08 at 12:54 pm
The line between issue and feature request is pretty thin, but here are my “issues” with the AIR application installer:
- Installer is not multilanguage (especially important for kids).
- Apart from the certificate verification displaying, there is nothing visually to retrace the application to the publisher. So there is too little graphical information of what you are actually installing from that point or from what company it came.
- The full system access warning is very scary. Although it’s good that the installer reminds the user, it’s also a big drawback for people. Developers should be able to choose not to implement those features and not get that message or just choose to only be able to read/write/modify in the directory of the application.
Matt
6 Aug 08 at 1:36 pm
I have noticed a couple of issues, which I’ve written about in more detail on my blog.
1. app-storage value does not work as expected on OS X
more info: http://playground.deju.nu/2008/07/htmlloader-and-local-pdf-content/
2. No FilteFilters in File.browseForSave.
more info: http://playground.deju.nu/2008/07/filebrowseforsave-and-filefilters/
3. stage.stageHeight is dependent on NativeMenus
more info: http://playground.deju.nu/2008/05/air-stage-height-and-nativemenus/
Those are the ones that come to mind right now, not sure if all of them would be classified as bugs or maybe just need some clarification in the documentation.
Jens Wegar
6 Aug 08 at 11:43 pm
* I had a lot of problems generating larger files. On our current projects we are handling air file sizes up to 700 mb (E-Learning software). The installation process on a normal XP Pc takes around 20 minutes, older machines may take up to 40 Minutes(!). Strangely enough, it’s much faster on Macs.
* I get a lot of “damaged air file” errors, when installing, and i am not really sure where they come from. It seems so random when the installation works, or not.
* The Air Debugger in Flash seems to “eat up” graphics. Some Loader instances just don’t show up, and sometimes that leads to whole parts of program to stop functioning. This behaviour almost renders the whole debugger useless.
btw, thanks for your stop here at Munich/Germany with the “on Air Tour”. I really enjoyed your speech.
Michael Borrmann
6 Aug 08 at 11:48 pm
The red message that appears when installing an AIR application is just too much for end-users, they get scared and close it down thinking “better to be safe than sorry” - which doesn’t do AIR any favours and will hinder its adoption rate.
The warning needs to be there and it needs to be obvious I know, but can’t it be yellow rather than red? Yellow signifies a warning, where as red signifies an error.
I’ve also heard from people about issues with running AIR apps on a macintosh so although I have no further details on this it would be good to know that any existing bugs people may have already submitted are definitely being investigated! :)
Ta,
M.
Mark McDonnell
7 Aug 08 at 12:11 am
The fact that a hosted html page with a file input control will always default to look for *.swf
- annoying!
Jesse
7 Aug 08 at 12:19 am
The big red warning on a black background is too scary for end users.
It would be nice to have a system like in Yahoo! Widgets where the developer can declare which features he’s going to need (i.e. filesystem access, web access, etc.) and display the warning accordingly. That way, there could even be a “green” icon for apps that don’t use any potentially dangerous features.
Laurent
Laurent
7 Aug 08 at 12:58 am
Full system access warning messages - why would you have something so scary without having any way for us to do anything about it? It’s only as dangerous as the next .exe, but .exe’s don’t go around scaring people with messages like that.
2 step installation (AIR Installation and then your App installation) can we not bundle both installations as one process for the end user? People are fickle and have short attention spans…
Better Flash IDE integration - I still haven’t managed to follow the technote to develop AIR 1.1 apps in Flash yet.
AIR update framework for Flash IDE - ok, I get that Flex and Javascript both have ways of making Alerts nice and easy, which is what quite a bit of the update framework seems to use, but can we please have an official update framework for Flash IDE projects?
James
7 Aug 08 at 2:15 am
At the moment only one thing is coming to my mind: On Windows if an AIR window is double-clicked so it goes to/from full-screen there seem to be no way to recognize that through an event.
sascha/hdrs
7 Aug 08 at 4:15 am
Most of the AIR apps I’ve enjoyed (Google Analytics, Snitter, Twirhl, TweetDeck) have struggled with bugs when upgrades are released. (Some to the point of not working.) (Mac 10.5) Sometimes the app’s documentation will indicate it’s an AIR problem. Whether that’s true or not, I do think it’s a serious problem in building appeal for AIR apps.
strottrot
7 Aug 08 at 5:59 am
Annoyances/limitations in AIR:
1. You’re not allowed to load a remote SWF into the same security domain as the AIR application. This seems odd, given that you can achieve the same effect by downloading the SWF file, saving it to disk, and then loading it as a local SWF — all in code. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but I don’t any reason for this restriction. Loading remote SWFs and interacting with them ought to be a fairly common use-case.
2. Repeated loading and unloading of child SWFs is almost guaranteed to leak memory, no matter what.
So +1 for funkyboy and Macaca above.
Manish Jethani
7 Aug 08 at 7:19 am
I’ve submitted this one to the bug list, but so far I haven’t seen it show up. It’s pretty minor, but pretty odd.
At least on the Mac, when I have a liquid layout, and buttons are, say, locking to the lower right corner, and I resize the window, the mouse position gets “frozen” as far as Flash is concerned, and the buttons highlight if they move through where the mouse was…hard to explain, but I posted a screen capture here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AySk_jWJGQE
I’ve seen this in AIR apps but not in the browser. Incidentally, though, I’ve also seen this in adl and the Flash CS3 “Test Movie” player. Not the standalone Flash Player or the browser plug-in player. I did not test on a PC.
Dru Kepple
7 Aug 08 at 8:11 am
I’ll add a +1 to the Mac issues, we just keep having more and more issues on the Mac and especially Mac performance. Our biggest Mac issue right now is that the NativeDragManager gets stuck in a state that it thinks it is still dragging, so all dragging in the application stops working and there is no way to clear it out.
Memory Management is by far the next biggest issue, we are working really hard to clear objects and listeners and reuse objects but the memory just keeps climbing. I don’t know if this is Flash, Flex or AIR, but for a full blown application it is making it very difficult to use for more than ten to twenty minutes and at this point we have to tell users, “Yeah, if you are doing a lot of work, plan on saving, exiting and relaunching if you want it to perform well.”
Todd Watson
7 Aug 08 at 2:58 pm
1. setAsDefaultApplication can’t override a file association if the user manually sets it. (Posted a comment on this here: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AIR/1.1/devappsflex/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118676a5f3b-8000.html)
2. I don’t know if this is just me, but when running in Flex Builder browseForOpen only shows up 1 in 8 times. Once the AIR app is installed it seems to work 100% so I’m not sure why it doesn’t in FB.
3. I will also vote for giving us full control over loading external resources into our application’s security context. It doesn’t have to be automatic, or even simple, but if I know the security risks and am willing to work with them I should be able to.
4. I will also vote for changing the Red warning on install to something a little less “error like”.
Steve M
7 Aug 08 at 3:01 pm
No support for HTTP GZIP compression.
andrew stuart
7 Aug 08 at 10:20 pm
When displaying PDF’s - Air displays an annoying black background before displaying the PDF - try as we might we cannot remove this ugly black flash.
andrew stuart
7 Aug 08 at 10:21 pm
Memory usage in both air and flash seems massive - our apps routinely consume from 200 - 600 megabytes RAM.
andrew stuart
7 Aug 08 at 10:22 pm
Our application does not use any of the scary security features of AIR like access to the local file system.
It would be good if AIR knew this and therefore had a more mild and less scary warning message.
andrew stuart
7 Aug 08 at 10:32 pm
I’d like a better integration of AIR apps with the host OS.
That is, to make them appear more native on Mac/Windows/Linux.
At the moment it’s as good as GTK (ok, it feels better), but there is a lot of work to be done.
Inevitably that means being able to use components such as cocoa’s combobox, buttons etc. and it would translate seamlessly on Windows / Linux.
I know it’s a lot to ask, but I believe it’s a priority for the success of AIR.
Love your work, cheers. N.
Nicolas Noben
7 Aug 08 at 11:05 pm
For bugs here’s the biggest issues
- in the Flash IDE trace doesn’t work unless you’re in debug mode
- If I am in the IDE and compiling a large project in debug mode. If I switch to another application I get the error “At line 260 of the file “.\ArtemisJSExtension.cpp”: Cannot find file /AIK//bin//asl.exe” every time. If I don’t switch application or use “Test movie” the error doesn’t happen
As far as features are concerned in priority order
- I really need to be able to make a standalone exe
- It would be great to have serial port / usb access
- Its great that you can have synchronous or asynchronous file access. But why are file dialog boxes only asynchronous? Seems to make things more tricky to program for no good reason
Here’s hoping the next version has some of these fixed
Cheers
Joe
Joe Cutting
8 Aug 08 at 1:57 am
Installation is black, full of warnings, and scary to a new user. Making the installation process for an AIR app friendlier is high on the list!
Ben
8 Aug 08 at 9:01 am
- I’d like my web service REST request to be able to access the http status of a non-200 response. Seems the URL monitor can detect it but my web service code just throws a fault.
- I cannot bundle resources with the AIR app installer without embedding them
- I cannot clear shared objects, app storage & encrypted stores during uninstallation
- Transparent windows with lot of UI can be a memory hog
- I am unable to prevent the app from launching after an upgrade
Ivo
8 Aug 08 at 12:30 pm
On top of my list is allowing a hybrid project in Flex Builder.
I realy need to use the same project to build flex and AIR apps.
Ricardo
9 Aug 08 at 4:13 am
so far…definitely the scary warnings! in the current configuration AIR is telling people “you don’t really want to install this, do you?”
it looks a lot more like an error message or a severe alert from your virus software than it should.
I really like the idea of having levels all the way to green if the app does not use any “dangerous” features.
John
9 Aug 08 at 5:38 am
1. Memory leaks in containers (add/remove children)
2. No socket/hardware access
3. Installation process is not user friendly. Allow for a GREEN icon. If we are releasing software and have a cert we should get a green icon. If we have to register somehow with Adobe, I’d be willing to do that. The installation process is part of the user’s first impression. It has to be flawless and easy.
4. Another vote for remote loaded swfs and security.
Great work though guys. Keep it up. I’ve loved most of the things you’ve done and love the tools that you’ve given us.
Tom Esposito
9 Aug 08 at 9:53 am
1)many apps display a delay between you touching a key and it typing that character into the text box
2) NON NATIVE LOOK!!! OS X should look like OS X, with traditional mac buttons and scroll bars, and windows ones should look like windows ones. It should not be up to developers to reinvent scrollers and buttons for each os, detect the os and then insert them as many air apps seem to do
(3) get a newer build of webkit!!)
James Churchman
9 Aug 08 at 1:53 pm
Oh and for many people choosing “Open” or “Save” when installing an app makes no sense!
It should read “install” and “save for later” — many people seem to think save means save the app to run later and are not even sure what open means
james
James Churchman
9 Aug 08 at 1:55 pm
No Linux support for remembering … um what are they called .. oh yes PASSWORDS
BTW I’m available for testing if needed.
Opensource Obscure
9 Aug 08 at 6:00 pm
another major issue is during install of AIR apps everything goes silent and there is no progress indicator for quite some time (I noticed this when clicking “badges” on web sites as well as when installing from a local .air file). several times I have assumed it was not working and started again.
as soon as a user starts an install they should get at least an “I’m doing something” message!
John
9 Aug 08 at 11:01 pm
Speaking as a non-expert end user On the Mac, performance seems to be a real issue. All the AIR apps I’ve tried so far seem rather sluggish and eat lots of CPU. One app that I’ve used in the past has now been AIR-fied to offer cross platform support, and it is definitely treacly.
Chris
10 Aug 08 at 12:01 am
+1 1. Memory leaks in containers (add/remove children)
andrew stuart
10 Aug 08 at 2:25 am
I know its not specific to air, but please, more speed! Flash and Air/actionscript are both slow as a wet week. It’s hard to believe I’m using a dual core Intel Core 2 duo when I have to wait for my app to do ordinary things.
andrew stuart
10 Aug 08 at 2:26 am
1) I’ll second Ta’s comment at the top. The transparency bug. I know about this because of our LocalConnection workaround for:
2) No external modules allowed in an AIR app. I’ve learned that this decision was a conscience one made by the AIR team. I understand the security issues, but there has to be something that can be done as a viable and secure workaround.
jeremy mooer
10 Aug 08 at 4:00 pm
Maybe not the biggest but one annoying.
When using flash combobox component the compiler warns:
*** Security Sandbox Violation ***
SecurityDomain ‘app:/abc.swf’ tried to access incompatible context ‘http://adobe.com/apollo’
And at least I can’t find out how to get rid of that warning.
Mikke
11 Aug 08 at 1:14 pm
go to http://www.filtrbox.com/widgets.php and then click the “install now” badge to get the Team USA Desktop Widget. I guess it is downloading in the background but I get no feedback that anything is happening for a loooooonnng time on a fast broadband connection.
should be a loading or downloading message.
John
11 Aug 08 at 6:50 pm
When loading any html page into the html control, if there is a select input control with many items, the size of the user’s monitor is not accounted for and the user cannot use the scrollbar to navigate to the end items.
The html select input control always seems to drop downwards even when the position of the control is very near the bottom of the user’s monitor.
This is probably a webkit issue or the air implementation of webkit.
Jesse
12 Aug 08 at 1:25 am
File Icons are not getting displayed when the OS(Windows XP) display settings in 16 bit color mode.
Custom Chrome(transparent)AIR Application performance is very slow when the OS(Windows XP) display settings in 16 bit color mode.
G V Ganesh
12 Aug 08 at 2:37 am
1.) Inability to load remote SWFs/Modules
2.) Differing DragManager/NativeDragManager classes (although there is a workaround if you want to use both)
3.) Admin rights required to update an app- can be annoying at times
tj
12 Aug 08 at 11:00 am
It would be good if we could display a PDF in our application and not have focus go to the PDF.
In our application the user needs to be able to navigate through rows in a datagrid, with the PDF coming up in area of the display window - it makes it impossible to navigate the list using the keyboard only because focus jumps to the PDF and you have to mouse click back to the list.
andrew stuart
12 Aug 08 at 9:00 pm
Better memory management! As said by Todd Watson above, even well written apps use a huge amount of memory, and it keeps rising if you load lots of external assets. Even if you unload and dispose them. AIR apps need to be able to run smoothly for hours in a row without eating all the computers memory.
Youri
13 Aug 08 at 12:22 am
That AIR apps seem to force new windows on browsers instead of new tabs. Hate it!
gaston
14 Aug 08 at 9:16 am
Memory is also my gripe.
I’m finding that Profiler reports my application as stable on memory use over time with objects routinely getting GC’d. However actual results reported by Activity Monitor/Task Manager show a different story.
kev
15 Aug 08 at 5:45 am
I’d really like AIR to be able to open other applications. Having the ability to run another .EXE for example with command line arguments would be excellent. I know it has to do with security restrictions on the machine, but this is my biggest gripe with AIR so far. Thanks
Grant Davis
16 Aug 08 at 2:34 pm
When I was trying to load an image into <mx:Image> and found that in a MAC machine, we need to add file:/// before the URL and on a PC its normal. This is against the cross-platform promise by AIR. I was loading image from My Documents folder. This is true for all the possible files loading into AIR.
As a solution, I finally wrote the code for MAC in a separate block and added file:/// and for PC none.
Memory is also an issue. Major issue I have noticed in AIR (and also Flex apps) is that, if you keep your AIR app idle for sometime, and access it, the app will take some time to respond back properly. It will hang sometimes.
I was able to load PDF into HTML control. But it failed when tried with a considerably bigger file.
Why can’t there be a custom chrome window class or something, instead of doing either a ‘Application’ tag or creating a second window with custom chrome?
This one is a feature request: Need to read hardware values, like MAC address. Need to open external files, executables…
Vipin
17 Aug 08 at 1:30 am
Memory usage and a garbage collector that actually works.
Alan Lewis
17 Aug 08 at 12:23 pm
I’ve only been using AIR recently - but the first issue I came across was the support of JS Date object in SQL Lite tables - the docs I could find say that you must add dates as named parameters - which makes sense and I did that and sure enough the DB showed that I had inserted an object into the table which I thought was ok - however contrary to the docs sorting did not work as expected - upon further playing neither did manipulating the dates in the SQL. It was until I realised that you create AS format dates in JS also that I thought maybe they issue was with JS Dates - and sure enough it was. using “new window.runtime.Date()” works a treat, but using “new Date()” doesn’t insert a usable Date object into the database - and when retrieving it it also come back as a non-date object.
So first request - either correct the docs to say JS Dates are not supported in SQL Lite - or fix the bug (the latter is preferable tho not essential)
Second request - ability to package external standalone executables within the AIR archive and have these available to the AIR app - I build a lot of ‘automation’ tools for internal dev work - and it’d be so handy to build them in AIR and include stuff like svn.exe, tidy.exe etc in the package also (it’d be up the app maker to include cross platform versions of these programmes or not). I know it’s a security ‘feature’ of AIR not allow this - but considering any non AIR app users install has all the potential in the world to destroy their machine and steal their money I don’t think it’d be tragic to give AIR a little of that power too - users need to be responsible with what they install - it’s not a problem Adobe should worry about. A webstart Java app has seemingly infinite power compared to an AIR app and I think for AIR apps to become more than glorified widgets they need a little extra power too.
Other than that right now I think AIR is excellent :)
Oh, and you know those funky ‘toolbars’ for iTunes and Windows Media Player that you get on windows that puts a mini player in your task bar - I so want AIR to do that too :)
Jon B
18 Aug 08 at 12:50 am
In AIR v1.0, the following works, but in v1.1 it stopped working.
If I perform a FileReference upload to a url that returns a 302 status code (a redirect), the HTTPStatusEvent.HTTP_RESPONSE_STATUS event listener is always null of length 0.
The response headers should return an array which would contain a location attribute for the redirect.
Joe
18 Aug 08 at 3:29 pm
@joe
That is a known issue and has been fixed internally. It will be fixed in the next update.
mike chambers
mesh@adobe.com
mikechambers
18 Aug 08 at 5:01 pm
Handling of docking an application to the sides of the screen with simple constants… and being able to animate the size of my bounds of my app and have it lock to the screen. Right now, to accomplish a resize animation and keep my app docked to the side requires two animations in parallel (with less than impressive results)
Also, when I apply a drop shadow to my application with custom chrome, it requires coming up with a delta to make sure that the app shows the shadow, it would be nice if the dropShadow size would be accounted into the appSize automatically
Thanks for reading
Patrck Lemiuex
19 Aug 08 at 8:28 pm
+5 for the Mac OS X issues (I’m on Tiger, Grrr)…
A lot of application focus switching (windowing) issues, especially with Twhirl it seems. Also click & drag stickiness have made my usability experience very clumsy.
Matt J. Sorenson
22 Aug 08 at 11:58 am
Another request - update the webkit engine to the latest code base used but browsers such as safari - I spent a few hours knocking something together in safari only to discover certain selectors aren’t present in the AIR webkit (:nth-child), and until you’ve used it you have no real idea how amazingly useful and brilliant :nth-child is ;)
Also “nativeWindow.startResize()” - why can’t it just accept an additional param which controls a windows min and max possible sizes when resizing - that would make life simpler.
Jon B
26 Aug 08 at 9:56 am
The bug above regarding having to put “file://” in front of Mac filepaths is a big one. One of the main reason I have moved to AIR is the inability of several other solutions to offer a true platform independent programming. Seems like it would be a simple fix for Adobe.
I was also experimenting with the “sidecar” installer and it was buggy on the Mac side. I also thought it was counter productive to have so many files on a disc when using the Mac “sidecar” installer. On the PC I only needed 3. It’s not a big deal but I could see some confusion for some of my less tech-savvy end users.
Arni Maack
27 Aug 08 at 9:40 pm
Reading some other comments I spot that you say “Just a quick reminder, but Im not looking for input on feature requests in this post.” Trouble is a lot of issues people have with AIR aren’t bugs, but things that frustrate an otherwise great app - which is kinda a feature request lol. Anyway, apologies for not reading that before I posted some sort of feature requests - is there a better place to do that?
Another ‘Issue’ I had - the built-in webkit doesn’t support @font-face meaning no font love for HTML/JS AIR apps - stuck using ye olde ‘web fonts’ *shudder*. I had also hoped as the HTMLLoader was a native displayObject that maybe there was so method to leverage the font support of Flash/Flex - but nothing there either.
Jon B
29 Aug 08 at 11:20 am
https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-13320
This is, I think a bug, and not a feature request. When you put a text area into a container that has a black background and white text, the text area (or input) inherits the container’s text color, even though it does not inherit the background, rendering the text invisible, unless you remember to specifically set the text area’s text color. If a container is not going to inherit it’s container’s background color, it should not inherit the text color.
A related problem arises in tabnavigators, and certain other containers, when a black background is used–the rollover color of the labels in the tabs is a dark charcoal, which is nearly invisible against a black background, and there does not appear to be any way to change it.
Doug
1 Sep 08 at 11:26 pm
Many unexpected behaviors on Vista. Doesn’t show up file access errors when it should. When using build in object compression gives error when decompressing (error #2058). AIR often fails to install on Vista. General bug (not Vista related) - different behavior in flash IDE (app works) and in Standalone compiled version (gives file access errors).
maltaannon
2 Sep 08 at 8:39 am
I know this is primarily a Webkit issue, but I really need MathML support to convert some projects from online (Firefox) to offline (Air).
shuyg
7 Sep 08 at 3:02 am
copyTo issue:
On windows, when I use the copyTo method (overwrite=true), I get “Error #3012: Cannot delete file or directory.” But ONLY when I’m viewing a destination directory that is nested within the “My Documents” directory. It seems to work fine when I’m copying to an open directory everywhere else. Is this a bug, or a security issue?
If my question reflects complete ignorance, don’t sweat it.
David
7 Sep 08 at 4:51 pm
IF we limit to issues here, one that took me some times was adding an Icon to my application.
Something very simple, but finding the information that you have to remove all the size that you do not have in the descriptor took me way too much time for something that should be simple.
The error messages, maybe I don’t have any luck, but they often don’t help at all.
Maybe it’s a lack of information but some example on how to handle migration of data (file and SQLite DB) when delivering a new version would be very helpfull. (having no clue, I do not do any migration on the application I’m currently working on because I can afford to, on the next one, I’ll be in trouble).
As for feature, report generation (as pdf or other) for printing is kind of an issue on standalone air applications.
Hope this help.
Nicolas
8 Sep 08 at 5:28 am
An issue we are constantly running into while developing software for schools is that you can’t do anything without admin rights. It would be nice if once the runtime was installed, apps could be installed WITHOUT admin rights. Of course the app would need to meet some guidelines to avoid malicious use, but copying/writing to a secured location _may_ just be enough. It’s a REALLY big issue for us, and for educational institutions.
Mike
8 Sep 08 at 11:43 pm
+1 Bundling AIR SDK install with AIR Application to make a single step install for users
Matt
10 Sep 08 at 9:12 pm
The native file system integration seems incomplete. Forget native library execution, I recently got stumped trying to display the default icons for various files in a directory. Sure, AIR provides File.icon, but this can’t provide an image in > 50% of the cases because os icons are often .ico or .icns
This is probably why all the File controls included in AIR (a la FileSystemTree) just give a generic file image.
cgdietz
11 Sep 08 at 11:11 am
Another thing that has been really irritating lately, is that when you select some text in an html control or text area, then click on anything else in the application, you lose your selection as soon as the html or text area loses focus. This is a very frustrating behavior, and not at all what you would expect.
Doug
11 Sep 08 at 11:56 pm
When flex combobox are dropped down several times, adl_lin uses up to 50% cpu. can’t figure out what’s happening. combobox has an eventlistener on “change” event type but app slowing down occures also when no change.
tom
16 Sep 08 at 6:30 am
I made a simple app that has a chrome less window for transparency. In mac OSX 10.5.2 when you drag the app all the way to the left or the top it scales the window down to like 25%…doesn’t do it on any other machine I’ve tested on either running XP or OSX 10.5.4 . I’ve tried setting the advanced application settings to not the let window be re sizable, this caused the content in the app to disappear as you drag the window left and then does not come back as you move back towards the middle of the desktop…When I made the window have system chrome it works fine…any clues?
thanks
tyler
22 Sep 08 at 3:40 pm
Strange behaviour in Vista:
With Vista UAC turned on, I could not update anything in SQL (SQLite db was in the applicationDirectory), however no write errors were reported, swutch OFF UAC and restart and SQL starts working again.
I got around this by copying the db to the applicationStorageDirectory in the end but it was not documented anywhere and I could find no info on this.
Nick
23 Sep 08 at 7:59 pm
Mike, I’m having major issues with AIR taking an EXTREMELY long time to load web pages with Flash video players on them like YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, etc. Sometimes, AIR can hang up to 20 seconds before rendering the page. Sometimes, AIR will fail to pass the Flash detection. One time, AIR just crashed after about 30 seconds of trying to render the page.
I’m using AIR 1.1. I really am not sure why the performance is so poor when loading pages with Flash on them. I thought the Webkit browser was pretty fast.
My examples are trivial, literally just adding an HTMLLoader to the stage of a NativeWindow and telling it to load a url. I wish I knew what was going wrong.
Steven Sacks
23 Sep 08 at 11:49 pm
I’d like to add a vote for fixing the chrome=none/transparent windows not showing SWFs in HTML components bug. This one’s a killer when you don’t wnat custom chrome.
Robert
25 Sep 08 at 12:54 pm
Mike,
I brought a project home and, my app doesn’t work corretly on my mac. the html component shows a blank screen where there should be content, this is while i am connected to my vpn at work.
Any suggestions?
Patrick Lemiuex
11 Oct 08 at 8:11 am
No possibility to apply File Filters to browseForSave!
Tushar Wadekar
13 Oct 08 at 2:23 am
My biggest frustration is trying to find answers to my questions by doing an online search. I googled “modal window air”, and i got results about how opening a window to let the air in can reduce allergens. I added the word “flex” to that query, and all I got was information about PopupManager, having nothing to do with an actual AIR window.
What we need is a whole ‘nother keyword that I can use when searching. I think I would have been better off when it was called “Astro” because that was a stronger keyword.
I propose that all webpages in the world that talk about Adobe AIR should have the keyword: “airgramming” (like programming for air). That way my search results will always be filtered to only include Adobe’s AIR, not the MacBook Air and not airplanes. Who’s with me?
Harry B. Garland
14 Oct 08 at 5:38 pm
Need instant visual feedback when an AIR badge is clicked on. Most of the time, I end up opening about 5 installers because the first time I click nothing happens.
Harry B. Garland
15 Oct 08 at 4:18 pm
AIR badges should be 10x easier to create. Not an issue for me anymore since I created my own “HarryAIR.js” file. But I would imagine that new AIR programmers would like to be able to insert a badge simply by adding a single “line” of JavaScript code, like this:
WriteAIRBadge({
appname:’JiraOnAir’,
appurl:’http://…/JiraOnAir.air’,
airversion:’1.0′,
imageurl:’air/JiraOnAir.jpg’,
buttoncolor:’3561A8′
})
Harry B. Garland
15 Oct 08 at 4:34 pm
Be nice to see some kind of built in encryption feature so developers could attempt to protect their content and also some way of storing encrypted local variables that the app can use at startup.
I’ve been told that the 1.5 version of Air may have local encrypted SQLite, which may help. If you could store variables and urls etc in a sqlite db that was natively encyrpted and placed in the application diretory to prevent tampering, this would be great. It would be great to here more detail about this feature.
Rich
17 Oct 08 at 3:50 pm
Trying to run any AIR app gives me:
“This application requires a version of Adobe AIR which is no longer supported. Please contact the application author for an updated version.”
After downloading the Adobe AIR installer from Adobe.com and trying to run it, the *installer itself* gives me that error.
John Athayde
26 Oct 08 at 11:20 am
For Windows XP:
- Better error handling when a user with restricted account tries to install an AIR application. It will fail (because you need administrator rights), but the error message indicates something is wrong with the AIR file, “contact the publisher”. Same goes for de-installation, we get funny error messages here, too.
For Linux:
- PLEASE support Linux in the installer badge.
- Please support 64-Bit Linux. It’s very painful to have a high-end computer and then your have to go through so much trouble to install Flash and AIR on it.
For all platforms:
- Allow the user to install the application in “user space”, opposed to “for all users”. This would remove the need for administrator rights, and it would be much easier to install and uninstall!
Alexander
29 Oct 08 at 3:00 am
The scary installation warnings. Because AIR issues scary warnings than you don’t get when downloading an exe, it makes it seem to most people that AIR apps must be much worse than the exe’s they’re used to.
Dallan Quass
5 Nov 08 at 7:35 am
Less scary installs.
Possibility of NON admin installs for applications.
More customisation in the installs - allowing us developers to make the install routine fit with the rest of the OS. The black boxes are cool but are different to the rest of the system mesages.
cheers
davidstclair
14 Nov 08 at 4:38 am
For me it’s printing. The printing generated by flex is very blury and things like barcodes etc need to be crystal clear.
I would also be nice to have complete control over printing without an os print dialog box.
bruce stenberg
19 Nov 08 at 2:30 am
+1 to:
“For all platforms:
- Allow the user to install the application in “user space”, opposed to “for all users”. This would remove the need for administrator rights, and it would be much easier to install and uninstall!”
We faced this problem right now in distributing business intranet application - our users don’t have administrative privileges but have AIR runtime - but to install or even to update application, they need administrative privileges again. I don’t understand it at all - why AIR runtime always install applications “for all users”? Why it can’t be configured? :(
Sergey Popov
19 Nov 08 at 7:30 am