Kevin Hoyt

Two very quiet, yet very important announcements came last week for developers using Adobe AIR. The first is a new “Introspector” for AIR developers using Ajax - think Firebug, but for AIR. The second is an update to Aptana Studio (1.1 required) which provides support for AIR Beta 3. Here’s a quick look at both these updates which should prove very beneficial to those with an HTML workflow.

AIR Introspector

We’ve heard this request right from the start “Is there something like Firebug, that lets me monitor the assets in my application?” The answer to that question is now a resounding, YES! The AIR Introspector is designed to let you interact deeply with every aspect of your application. By adding a single SCRIPT tag to your application, and hitting F12 on your keyboard once you’re application is running, you’ll be presented with a new window that loaded with information about your application.

There’s so many features in the Introspector that I’ll encourage you to download it yourself and read the documentation (eleven pages in all). At a high level however, here’s a partial list of the some of the features the Introspector has in store for you.

Point at a user interface element and be able to see and edit the markup and DOM properties.

An interactive console that lets you access references, adjust values and execute JavaScript code.

Lists links, images, CSS and JavaScript assets loaded into your application.

Provides for viewing the original markup and the current markup.

Viewer for XHR objects including their properties and headers.

Search for matching text in the source code of your application.

Aptana Gets Support for AIR Beta 3

When it comes to developing data centric applications with Ajax, I’ve been a big fan of Aptana from the start. It has amazing support for JavaScript intelligence and can get you up and going with most Ajax frameworks with a few clicks of the mouse. The gang at Aptana have also been supporting Adobe AIR (as well as Spry) in their product for a while now. Last week Aptana got an update to support AIR Beta 3!

AIR Beta 3 requires that every AIR application be signed. This might be a self-generated developer certificate, or an official certificate from Verisign or Thawte. This means that there’s a variety of new SDK (e.g. ADT) commands, and now GUI support for all of that can be found in Aptana. You can even manage a list of certificates (new) as well as various versions of the AIR runtime (existing).

If you’re new to developing for Adobe AIR, creating a new Aptana project will give you everything you need to get started. Several files will be created as demonstration content. When you run the out-of-the-box application, you’ll get specific examples of various functionality. Most importantly is that this includes examples of the security sandbox provided by AIR. The created sample files even include the new Introspector, so you can quickly dig deeper.

Just last week I finished one leg (of several) of a Flex 3/AIR 1.0 pre-release tour. We’re getting closer and closer to the finish line. I’ve tested Aptana’s AIR support and the Introspector with internal builds that are very close to the final product, and they both worked without modification. Stay tuned as there’s a lot more to come from Adobe on the Ajax front as it relates to AIR specifically in the short term as we get closer to release.

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