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Adobe AIR (discontinued)

Score6.5 out of 10

68 Reviews and Ratings

What is Adobe AIR (discontinued)?

Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) was a cross-platform runtime environment developed by Adobe that enabled software developers to build and deploy desktop and mobile applications using web technologies—including HTML, JavaScript, CSS, ActionScript, and Apache Flex. The runtime allowed web-based applications to execute outside a web browser as standalone software, providing access to native operating system APIs, local file systems, windowing controls, and hardware capabilities. Adobe officially discontinued its own development and technical support for Adobe AIR on December 31, 2020, coinciding with the end-of-life (EOL) of Adobe Flash Player.

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Categories & Use Cases

Who Buys & Uses Adobe AIR (discontinued)

Adobe AIR (discontinued) Reviews

What users are saying about Adobe AIR (discontinued).
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Adobe AIR

Incentivized
Yosef Ing
Director of Social Media in Social Media at GayTravel (11-50 employees)

Pros

  • Saves and stores documents and keeps organized
  • Crossplatform compatibility
  • Can build without code
  • Applications and secure and fast

Cons

  • There are not a lot of resources out there, even from Adobe
  • Not used a lot so not a lot of integrations
  • Difficult to learn at first

Most Important Features

  • Interface
  • Easy builds
  • Offline usage and document access
  • Reliable

Return on Investment

  • It has helped us build better applications and quicker

Was Once Great…

Incentivized
Jon MarrView profile
Owner in Information Technology at JMarr Design Studio (1-10 employees)

Pros

  • Flexible Deployment
  • Solid API with AS3
  • Once had strong user base

Cons

  • No longer supported by Adobe
  • Dwindling user base
  • Lack of new functionality

Most Important Features

  • Cross-Platform Publishing
  • Familiar AS3 API
  • Easy to work with

Return on Investment

  • A cost effective way to publish to many platforms from one code base
  • Didn’t have to retrain in new APIs
  • Could publish to both iOS and Android

Alternatives Considered

Xamarin

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, GitLab

Adobe AIR: A good solution for cross-platform deployment

Incentivized
John Mihaila
Software Manager in Information Technology at Santa Clara (10,001+ employees)

Pros

  • Runs on Windows, Mac OS, Android and Apple iOS.
  • Allows developers to use tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Flash Professional and even text editor to develop an app.
  • Adobe AIR runtime and AIR SDK are free.

Cons

  • Android widgets are currently not supported in AIR.
  • Not all Adobe Creative Suite applications are compatible with AIR.
  • No support for desktop Linux.

Most Important Features

  • Cross-platform functionality.
  • Integrates with some Adobe Creative Suite apps.
  • Supported by third-party plug-ins.

Return on Investment

  • Allows easy porting of functionality and look and feel to many diverse platforms.
  • Shorten development and deployment time.
  • Reduced training and support costs by re-using common widgets.

Alternatives Considered

Visual Studio IDE

Other Software Used

Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, Adobe Animate (formerly Flash)

Great tool that I wish they would bring back in it's previous iteration!

Incentivized
Marilyn RodriguezView profile
Owner/Art Director at Art in Motion Graphic Design LLC (1-10 employees)

Pros

  • Easy to learn
  • Works efficiently
  • Seamless integration
  • Adobe support (when it was still being updated)

Cons

  • Would have been nice to keep it supported
  • No updates in a long time
  • Not many tutorials on advanced features
  • Can no longer update it anywhere

Most Important Features

  • Adobe reliability
  • Easy to learn for our freelancers
  • Free

Return on Investment

  • Enabled us to take on some new projects
  • Was very little ROI as it was a free application for most of it's life

Other Software Used

Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, Adobe PhotoShop

AIRing my grievances

Incentivized
Chris CooksonView profile
Junior Animator in Social Media at MediaMonks (201-500 employees)

Pros

  • Easy to develop for, skills for programs such as Adobe Animate and basic backend translate well to the program.
  • Stable across multiple different platforms.
  • Can get a working prototype really quickly

Cons

  • Adobe Air applications are taxing on a user's CPU, especially considering how simple a lot of the apps are.
  • Updating and installing Air based applications is very user unfriendly, often asks for updates that are aggressively pushed to the front of the user.
  • As HTML 5 has gotten more and more sophisticated, for basic things a lot of times browser-based apps make a lot more sense.

Return on Investment

  • It's a safe environment, great for entry-level programmers to get started and show their ideas.
  • Easy to get started, build and iterate.
  • However, at a certain point, Air applications can become unwieldy so for any serious project. We often would rather build it all outside of a middleware environment.

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Flash, canvas and CreateJS

Other Software Used

Adobe Flash, Zoho Creator, HP OpenView