For the seasoned Flex developer, we’ve been accustomed to using the Flex Component Explorer as a reference. However, this is set to change with a great new application called Tour de Flex.

Tour de Flex is a desktop application, built using AIR, with the goal of providing a way to explore Flex’s capabilities and resources, including the core Flex components, Adobe AIR and data integration.

Created by James Ward, Greg Wilson and Christophe Coenraets, Tour de Flex has three main purposes: provide non-Flex developers with an overview of what is possible; provide seasoned Flex developers with a visual reference tool; and finally, provide commercial and non-commercial Flex developers a platform to showcase their skills.

Probably the greatest feature of this application is the integration of a variety of third-party components, effects and skins. The application contains examples from the following and we are told that this list will be regularly updated when new content becomes available:

• Acrobat.com Share
• Amazon
• AOL Instant Messenger
• Cocomo
• Ebay
• Flickr
• Google Language
• Intuit Quickbase
• Last.fm
• Photoshop.com
• Salesforce.com
• Scribd
• Smugmug
• Twitter
• Yahoo Weather

Below is a selection of screenshots from the application:

(Click on the images to see a larger view)

Included with the Tour de Flex project is an Eclipse plugin, built by Holly Schinsky, that provides a search interface to the 200+ examples available in the main Tour de Flex application. The plugin allows you to search by component name, tag or author and double-click any item in the results to immediately see the component in Tour de Flex.

To install the plugin, add the following URL to your Eclipse software update sites:

http://tourdeflex.adobe.com/eclipse.

Once installed, a new Tour de Flex view is available to add. The plugin has been tested with Eclipse 3.4 and with Flex Builder 3.x.

The official Tour de Flex page and install can be found on the Flex.org website.

Applications that depend on user input to create a SQL statement — concatenating the user input to the SQL query — can become vulnerable to SQL Injection attacks, much like those common to web applications.

SQL Injection is a technique that exploits a security vulnerability occurring in the database layer of an application. The vulnerability is present when user input is either incorrectly filtered for string literal escape characters embedded in SQL statements or user input is not strongly typed and thereby unexpectedly executed.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to the problem: use parameterised SQL Statements. Parameterised statements not only make your applications more secure and run more efficiently, but they also enable you to use objects, rather than literal values, in your queries. SQL injection can’t happen because the parameter values are treated explicitly as substituted values, rather than becoming part of the literal statement text.

Parameters in a SQL statement can be either named or unnamed. Below are examples of both types of statement in ActionScript and JavaScript.

Named Parameters

A named parameter has a specific name that is used to match the parameter value to its placeholder location in the SQL statement text. A parameter name consists of the colon (:) or an at (@) character followed by the variable’s name:

ActionScript 3

var conn:SQLConnection = new SQLConnection();
var stmt:SQLStatement = new SQLStatement();
stmt.sqlConnection = conn;
stmt.text = "INSERT INTO user VALUES(@title, @firstname, @lastname)";
stmt.parameters["@title"] = "Mr";
stmt.parameters["@firstname"] = "Simon";
stmt.parameters["@lastname"] = "Whatley";
stmt.execute()

JavaScript

var conn = new air.SQLConnection();
var stmt = new air.SQLStatement();
stmt.sqlConnection = conn;
stmt.text = "INSERT INTO user VALUES(@title, @firstname, @lastname)";
stmt.parameters["@title"] = "Mr";
stmt.parameters["@firstname"] = "Simon";
stmt.parameters["@lastname"] = "Whatley";
stmt.execute()

Unnamed Parameters

As an alternative to using explicit named parameters, you can also use implicit unnamed parameters. To use an unnamed parameter you simply designate a parameter in the SQL statement using a question mark (?) character. Each parameter is assigned a numeric index, according to the order in which the parameters appear in the SQL statement, starting with index 0 (zero) for the first parameter.

ActionScript 3

var conn:SQLConnection = new SQLConnection();
var stmt:SQLStatement = new SQLStatement();
stmt.sqlConnection = conn;
stmt.text = "INSERT INTO address VALUES(?, ?, ?, ?)";
stmt.parameters[0] = "123 Main Street";
stmt.parameters[1] = "Sometown";
stmt.parameters[2] = "12345";
stmt.parameters[3] = "USA";
stmt.execute()

JavaScript

var conn = new air.SQLConnection();
var stmt = new air.SQLStatement();
stmt.sqlConnection = conn;
stmt.text = "INSERT INTO address VALUES(?, ?, ?, ?)";
stmt.parameters[0] = "123 Main Street";
stmt.parameters[1] = "Sometown";
stmt.parameters[2] = "12345";
stmt.parameters[3] = "USA";
stmt.execute()

Note: Use clearParameters() to empty the statement parameters array; e.g. stmt.clearParameters().

Advantages

1. Performance – A SQL statement that uses parameters can execute more efficiently compared to one that dynamically creates the SQL text each time it executes. The performance improvement is because the statement is prepared once and then executed multiple times using different parameter values, without needing to recompile the SQL statement. A comparison can be draw with database stored procedures.
2. Data Typing – Parameters are used to allow for typed-substitution of values that are unknown at the time the SQL statement is constructed. The use of parameters is the only way to guarantee the type (storage class) for a value passed to the database. Using paramters therefore, implies better performance and security. When parameters are not used, the runtime attempts to convert all values from their text representation to a type based on the associated column’s type.
3. Security – The AIR application is not vulnerable to SQL injections so common to web applications.

This book is the official guide to Adobe AIR, written by members of the AIR team. With Adobe AIR, web developers can use technologies like HTML and JavaScript to build and deploy web applications to the desktop. Packed with examples, this book explains how AIR works and features recipes for performing common runtime tasks. Part of the Adobe Developer Library, this concise pocket guide explains:

• What Adobe AIR is, and the problems this runtime aims to solve
• How to set up your development environment
• The HTML and JavaScript environments within AIR
• How to create your first AIR application using HTML and JavaScript
• Ways to perform an array of common tasks with this runtime

Also included is a guide to AIR packages, classes, and command line tools. Once you understand the basics of building HTML- and JavaScript-based AIR applications, this book makes an ideal reference for tackling specific problems. It offers a quick introduction to a significant new development technology, which lets you combine the reach and ease of the Web with the power of the desktop.

So why the big deal?

Software is moving from being packaged, where you develop for a particular operating system and put it in a box, to being developed and distributed over the internet and being designed to run across operating systems. That’s where all the innovation has moved to. Software isn’t as OS-specific anymore, it’s moving to rich internet applications. It’s a sea change in how software in general is being built.

Adobe’s Kevin Lynch on AIR’s Open-Source Road to the Desktop.

What is Adobe offering?

Adobe hasn’t developed a cohesive online suite like Google Docs and Zoho, but they are developing a series of applications that will, given time, challenge for position.

Buzzword

Buzzword, originally developed by Virtual Ubiquity, is a web-based, highly collaborative word processor built on Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash platform. This online editor really excels in “what you see is what you print” (WYSIWYP) functionality. Unlike the slightly clunky Google Docs and Zoho Writer, using Flash allows Buzzword to handle page layout in a way that is not possible with HTML. Buzzword also offers online collaboration via its sharing feature, which, like Google Docs, allows users to invite others to read, edit or comment on documents in realtime. Buzzword stores files online so that they are available in a single repository for document collaboration. Work is underway to support Adobe AIR to allow for offline work.

(click on the images for more detail)

You can find more information about Buzzword on the Adobe Labs website.

Share

Share is a free web-based service that makes it easy to share, publish and organize your important documents. Each document you upload to your Share account is assigned a unique website address. To share a document with someone, select the document you want to share, enter the person’s email address and an optional message, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted only to the recipients. Recipients will get an email with a link they can click on to download the document. You can also link to your documents, or embed flash previews on your own website, blog or wiki. This concept is not new, with Scribd and Issuu being an alternatives.

(click on the images for more detail)

You can find more information about Share on the Adobe Labs website.

Photoshop Express

Adobe Photoshop Express is an online Rich Internet Application (RIA) where you can polish, sort, store, and show off up to 2GB of photos. Furthermore, you can crop, rotate, smudge, tweak, twirl, pinch, correct — or any combination you like — the images. The tool isn’t like its more powerful offline sister, it is more like the photo editing website Picnik. What’s interesting about the Adobe offering, is the fact that Photoshop Express comes with 2GB of free storage for your photos, which makes it less of just an online tool, and more of an online service. The 2GB trumps Picassa‘s current 1GB.

(click on the images for more detail)

You can find more information about Photoshop Express on the Adobe Labs website.

Brio

Brio, currently in Beta, is a personal web-conferenceing service that enables you to instantly communicate and collaborate using your own online meeting room. Brio offers screen-sharing, full multi-party video, VoIP, teleconferencing, whiteboarding, chat and shared notes; all via the browser.

To start a meeting, just go to your meeting room and invite others to join you at the same URL. As the host, you will need to download a small Brio add-in in order to share your screen. Meeting attendees will not need to download any software unless they will also be sharing their screen. There is no need to schedule meetings in advance.

(click on the images for more detail)

You can find more information about Brio on the Adobe Labs website.

Integration and Offline Access

Although each of these tools work independently of one another, using different sign-ons, it is a very real possibility that Adobe will adopt a similar route to that of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Zoho and integrate their online products into a single cohesive unit with one sign-on; the Adobe ID.

Plans are already afoot to integrate the Buzzword and Share tools, both of which sit naturally together. What would be more interesting would be the integration of Photoshop Express with these tools so that you can, for example, edit images embedded in a Buzzword document.

The Future

Adobe has stiff competion from the offline, desktop applications. This is where AIR enters the picture. Adobe said, as far back as September 2007, that they would create a version of Buzzword in AIR. This has yet to be envisaged, but the rumblings from Adobe suggest that this development is still in the works. Bringing Buzzword to the desktop would be an extremely significant step, making it a very real alternative to desktop word processors.

All that is required now for Adobe is to implement a spreadsheet and presentation application. Whether they buy in these tools, or use their existing skill set is the question. On current form, and if the acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity and its Buzzword product is an indication, Adobe are likely to be keeping a keen eye on existing technologies being developed by third parties. For example SlideRocket is a viable contender for presentations – built in Flash and with an AIR client; the user interface even looks similar to the above products. Or there is blist for spreadsheets that again is built on Flex/Flash technology.

Keep an eye on Adobe Labs for their latest developments. You will notice developments in areas such as RSS with myFeedz, colour theming with Kuler, and a competitor to Microsoft’s Sharepoint and Google’s Sites called JamJar.

Up until very recently, the void between the Web and the desktop seemed like a schism that could not be crossed. But since AIR‘s 1.0 release in February this year, a whole host of other applications are emerging to compete with AIR in the single site browser space.

Although AIR is very new, the product is remarkably mature with the integration of the excellent opensource WebKit browser engine for rendering HTML and JavaScript, the SQLite database engine for embedded database functionality and of course, Adobe’s Flash player for development of Flash-based Rich Internet Applications. Because of this flexibility, the learning curve faced by developers is almost non-existent, they simply have to get to grips with the AIR API.

What is all the fuss about?

Delving into the AIR API, your application will have the ability to detect whether it is currently the active window or connected to the network. You can access the file system, allowing you to read and write files, access other datasources, tap into the native menu options or interact with almost any aspect of the operating system in a way familiar to common desktop applications. This functionality is available regardless of the architecture on which it is installed. Therefore AIR applications will work similarly when installed on a Windows PC or Mac, and soon on Linux machines as well.

AIR is much, much more than a single-site browser — it’s a cross-platform runtime environment and the distinction is significant.

The ability to run applications built on AIR on almost any machine, on- and offline, sets it apart from any other offering currently out there or in development. For example, Google Gears is restricted to AJAX applications, whilst Mozilla Prism isn’t much more advanced than a cut-down version of Firefox, with no offline capabilities yet.

Who else has entered the race?

As mentioned, a significant entry is Mozilla’s Prism, however, Pyro for Linux and Bubbles and Fluid for Mac are clever little tools for packaging up an existing website and presenting it as a standalone desktop application.

Mozilla Prism

Prism, previously known as WebRunner is a product in development which integrates web applications with the desktop, allowing web applications to be launched from the desktop and configured independently of the default web browser. It is commonly used with Google AJAX Applications, such as Gmail and Google Docs.

Prism is part of an experiment by Mozilla designed to “bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop applications”. Essentially, Prism will allow you to create a desktop-like application out of individual websites. These site-specific applications are a growing trend and a trend heavily marketed by, not only Adobe, but now Mozilla, as ‘the future’.

While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using Web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of Web browsers.

In its current form, Prism doesn’t have the ability to function as a desktop application without access to the Internet, but Mozilla says it is “working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.”

More details can be found on the Mozilla Prism website.

Pyro Desktop

Pyro Desktop is a new type of desktop environment for Linux built on Mozilla Firefox. Its goal is to enable true integration between the Web and modern desktop computing. Pyro was announced during GUADEC 2007 and is developed by Alex Graveley and Chris Toshok.

More details can be found on the Pyro Desktop website.

3D3R Bubbles

Bubbles is a desktop application that allows you to work with your web resources in the way you want to work with them.

The Bubbles application window, known simply as a Bubble carries the web resource almost like a web browser does. Since the Bubble has advanced browser capabilities there’s an advanced control device for it — the Bubble seed — an XML file called Smart Bubble. It defines the properties — the whats & the hows — of its Bubble window. The Smart Bubble contains the information about what Bubble will load, how it will look on the desktop and what capabilities it will have, etc. So it goes from the Smart Bubble into a grown Bubble that lives on your desktop, accessible from the system tray.

More details can be found on the 3D3R Bubbles website.

Fluid App

Fluid is a way to create Site-Specific Browsers SSBs to run each of your favorite WebApps as a separate desktop application. Fluid gives any WebApp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, logical separation from your other web browsing activity, and many other goodies.

Fluid includes optional Tabbed Browsing, built-in Userscripting (aka Greasemonkey/GreaseKit), RSS/Atom Feed detection, a JavaScript API for setting dock badges, showing Growl notifications and adding Dock Menu Items, optional bookmarks, optional browsing to urls outside the SSB “home” domain, Dock badges and Dock menus for Gmail, Google Reader, Facebook, Flickr, and Yahoo! Mail, auto-software updates via the Sparkle Update framework, and custom SSB icons.

More details can be found on the Fluid App website.

Download the ActionScript reference for RIA development (PDF 1.3MB)

The Adobe technology platform contains two primary runtimes. Flash Player is browser-based, and Adobe AIR is desktop-based. Because Adobe AIR is built on top of Flash Player, the Flash Player APIs are available within Adobe AIR. Consequently, Adobe AIR APIs are not available within Flash Player. The Flex framework is built on top of the Flash Player APIs, so it runs in both Flash Player and Adobe AIR. However, a number of Flex APIs take advantage of AIR APIs, and thus work only within Adobe AIR.

More information about this guide can be found on the Adobe Developer Centre Website.

So what is the big deal? The Adobe marketing team state that:

The Adobe AIR runtime lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems. Adobe AIR offers an exciting new way to engage customers with innovative, branded desktop applications, without requiring changes to existing technology, people, or processes.

What AIR applications should you check out?

What is intriguing is that all the tools I have chosen are generally useful tools for the developer or designer, with the exception of twhirl, which is a social-interaction tool. I’m looking forward to when other, less developer-centric tools become freely available. AgileAgenda has taken the lead with this respect, albeit not freely available, as has eBay desktop, but I would like to see examples from the BBC in the form of a desktop BBC iPlayer or maybe a Flickr image browser, del.icio.us bookmark reader, RSS aggregator and a Picnik image editor.

Analytics Reporting Suite

The Analytics Reporting Suite, by Nicolas Lierman, brings Google Analytics to the desktop. It uses it’s own custom API to interact with Google and nearly implements all the features of Analytics.

For website owners this is a must-have application. Like the twhirl AIR application below, it is a fantastic example of what can be achieved with Flex and AIR. Measuring visitor trends and traffic are essential tasks to managing and improving a websites performance. The Analytics Reporting Suite allows you to configure multiple Google’s Analytics accounts and access the web-based suite’s plethora of features via a desktop application. The application displays integrated graphs and animations via a tabbed interface, which allows you switch between a number of reports. These reports can then be saved as a PDF, Excel or XMLdocument, or printed.

You can download and install the application from the About Nico website.

twhirl twitter Client

twhirl, by Marco Kaiser, is probably the most popular desktop client for the twitter micro-blogging service. Most of the features available on the twitter website are accessible through twhirl, plus, a lot of usability enhancements have been added to make it easier to manage multiple accounts. This is great for those who want to separate business and personal accounts they may have.

The twhirl application is a great example of how AIR can bring web applications to the desktop; it can dock to the system tray, display message alerts and you can configure the applications opacity when not focused (great if you like Mac and Vista-styled themes). The application allows you to search twitter users, view their timelines, add friends, view followers, delete tweets and much much more. Twhirl automatically fetches your friends’ status updates, direct messages and replies, whilst also colour coding different types of messages and alerting you to messages both audibly and visually.

The twhirl application is skinnable and comes with several built in skins with which you can customise the application. All-in-all twhirl is not only one of the best twitter clients, but AIR applications.

You can download and install the application from the twhirl website.

Kuler Desktop

Adobe kuler is the first web-hosted application from Adobe Labs designed both to stand alone and to complement Adobe Creative Suite software. Built using Adobe Flash and ActionScript 3.0, kuler is all about colour: colour for exploration, inspiration, experimentation and sharing. Kuler is clearly targeted at the designer, but anyone interested in colour will benefit from its use.

You can download and install the application from the Adobe Labs website.

WebKut

WebKut is a web screenshot tool that allows you to capture web pages, or parts of them in a very simple way. It provides you with 3 capture options: the entire page, the current view, or only a selection. This little application proves particularly handy for those presentations or projects that need great visuals from the web.

You can download and install the application from the WebKut website.

RichFLV

RichFLV, by Benjamin Dobler, lets you edit FLV files. The key features include reading FLV metadata, read and edit cuepoints, cut FLV files, convert the sound from an FLV to MP3 format, convert an FLV to an SWF … and much more.

You can download and install the application from the Adobe AIR Marketplace website.

SearchCoders Dashboard

This Flex-based chat widget is designed with programmers in mind. The code input feature allows developers to chat about code without disrupting the conversation.

You can download and install the application from the SearchCoders website.

Pownce

Much like twhirl in look, feel and ease-of-use, but with a slant towards productivity rather than micro-blogging, Pownce is a way to keep in touch and share things with your friends or colleagues. You can send people files, links, events, and messages and then have real conversations with the recipients. This is a great collaboration tool and was one of the first services to really embrace AIR as an application architecture, which could realise their service as a desktop client. Everything that is available via the Pownce website is also available via the client application, except and possibly importantly, the ability for the user to amend their account settings and add friends to your network; this still has to be done via the website.

For a small annual amount, Pownce offers a paid-for service which will eliminate adverts from your profile and allow you to send huge file sizes (100MB) and customise the theme of your Pownce.

Pownce also offers Drupal integration and a mobile application, which works with the iPhone, BlackBerries and many more ‘internet-ready’ mobile devices.

You can download and install the application from the Pownce website.

Microsoft Silverlight is a proprietary runtime for browser-based Rich Internet Applications, providing a subset of the animation, vector graphics, and video playback capabilities of Windows Presentation Foundation. The runtime is available for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, with Linux support under development via the third-party Moonlight runtime.

Microsoft describes its advantages as follows:

Compelling Cross-Platform User Experiences

• Deliver media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web that incorporate video, animation, interactivity, and stunning user interfaces.
• Seamless, fast installation for users, thanks to a small, on-demand, easy-to-install plug-in that is under 2 megabytes (MB) in size and works with all leading browsers.
• Consistent experiences between Windows-based and Macintosh computers without any additional installation requirements.
• Create richer, more compelling Web experiences that take greater advantage of the client for increased performance.
• Stunning vector-based graphics, media, text, animation, and overlays that enable seamless integration of graphics and effects into any existing Web application.
• Enhance existing standards/AJAX-based applications with richer graphics and media, and improve their performance and capabilities by using Silverlight.

Flexible Programming Model with Collaboration Tools

• Based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Silverlight enables developers and designers to easily use existing skills and tools to deliver media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.
• Simple integration with existing Web technologies and assets means Silverlight works with any back-end Web environment or technology. No “rip and replace” required.
• Silverlight integrates with your existing infrastructure and applications, including Apache, PHP, as well as JavaScript and XHTML on the client.
• Choice of development languages including JavaScript, Ruby, Python, C#, Visual Basic .NET, and more.
• Role-specific tools for both designers and developers that take advantage of Web standards and the breadth of the Microsoft .NET connected software features.
• For designers: Microsoft Expression Studio for creating interactive user interfaces and media rich experiences, preparing media for encoding and distribution, and creating World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards-compliant sites using modern XHTML, XML, XSLT, CSS, and ASP.NET.
• For developers: Microsoft Visual Studio for developing client and server code with full Microsoft IntelliSense, powerful cross-platform debugging, rich language support, and more.
• Consistent presentation model by using XAML, the declarative presentation language used in Windows Vista–based applications. Controls, visual designs, media, and other elements can be presented with full design fidelity in both Silverlight and Windows-based applications.
• Extensible control model makes it easy to add rich content and behaviors while enabling efficient code-reuse and sharing.
• Dramatically improved performance for AJAX-enabled Web sites with the power, performance, and flexibility of Silverlight and .NET-connected software.

High Quality, Low Cost Media

• Unified media format that scales from high definition (HD) to mobile with Windows Media Video (WMV), the Microsoft implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 video standard, as well as support for Windows Media Audio (WMA) and MP3 audio.
• Add vector-based graphics and overlays to media with support for integration of graphics that scale to any size and broadcast-style overlays for tickers and closed captioning.
• Flexible ad-insertion solutions with video and animation, including the ability to deliver fluid, broadcast-style video or animated advertisements without loss of visual fidelity or motion quality.
• Lower-cost media streaming with Emmy Award winning Windows Media technologies that can lower the cost of streaming delivery by up to 46%, and enjoy the flexibility to work with your existing Windows Media streaming deployments. Even further cost reductions are possible with the upcoming Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Media Pack for Microsoft Windows Server 2008.
• Broad ecosystem of media tools, servers, and solutions compatible with the Windows Media operating system.
• Microsoft PlayReady content-access technology that delivers a single solution for digital rights management support on both Windows-based and Macintosh computers for content providers (coming in Silverlight 1.1)
• Powerful encoding tools for live and on-demand publishing of media experiences with Microsoft Expression Encoder, including hardware-accelerated encoding of WMV and VC-1 at up to 15 times the performance of software alone when paired with a Tarari Encoder Accelerator board.

Connected to Data, Servers, and Services

• Mash-up and incorporate services and data from the Web by taking advantage of the Silverlight support for LINQ while accessing that data with common protocols like JSON, RSS, POX, and REST.
• Increase discoverability of rich interactive application (RIA) content that can be indexed and searched due to the text-based XAML format that describes interface and content in a Silverlight-based application.
• Rapidly scale applications with Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live to host and integrate software services and media content.

Streaming audio and video

• Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live offers a free streaming and application hosting solution for delivering high-quality, cross-platform, cross-browser, media-enabled rich interactive applications (RIAs). With the ability to author content in Microsoft Expression Encoder and other third-party editing environments, Web designers maintain complete control of the user experience.

Adobe thinks it has the answer and so now does Mozilla.

A year ago, most web developers had to think about Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and perhaps WAP for mobile devices and widget development for one of yet more platforms. Today the horizon is changing and web developers are afforded more opportunity and possibly with that more complexity, through offline development.

Browser extensions now exist that allow for the creation of offline web applications with Dojo Offline, Google Gears, Firefox 3, and other options on the market, pioneering the way and making it possible to take your web application with you on an aeroplane or an underground train.

The drive to make these offline applications desktop applications has also been thrown into the mix, with examples coming from Apple with WebKit Cocoa bindings, Adobe with AIR and Microsoft with Silverlight. Now it is the turn of Mozilla to enter the foray with a project called Prism.

Prism is part of an experiment by Mozilla designed to “bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop applications“. Essentially, Prism will allow you to create a desktop-like application out of individual websites. These site-specific applications are a growing trend and a trend heavily marketed by, not only Adobe, but now Mozilla, as ‘the future’.

While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using Web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of Web browsers.

In its current form, Prism doesn’t have the ability to function as a desktop application without access to the Internet, but Mozilla says it is “working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.”

Instead of needing to run a browser to, for example, access Google Calendar, a simple icon can be clicked on the desktop. The icon will launch the Google Calendar application inside a Prism window, without any of the additional web browser bloat. This can have its benefits, especially when designing workflows and securing applications as the developer’s pain, the back button and address bar, are removed from the equation.

Although Mozilla may be excited about the concepts behind Prism, and Adobe about AIR not everyone shares the same enthusiasm, or has the working habits that require such an application-based approach. For some, the advantage of web applications is that they inherently aren’t desktop applications and everything can be handled in a single application almost anywhere on the planet, assuming a computer with a browser and web connection. However, Prism, AIR and Silverlight could end up offering the best of both worlds.

We’re bringing together the most creative and influential minds in the community, from designers and developers to executives and partners, that will shape the future of our industry.

Adobe MAX is the one conference of the year where you can meet and interact with the teams who build Adobe platform technologies, such as Flex, Flash and Adobe AIR, that you use and develop with every day. There is simply no better opportunity to gain a deep understanding of these technologies. (Mike Chambers – Senior Product Manager)

For those of you who use Yahoo!’s Upcoming.org, there is now an event entry:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/235624/

See you there!