Adobe Integrated Runtime is more than just hot air, it traverses the previously unexplored space that exists between the Web and desktop applications.

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.

The ActionScript reference for rich Internet application development provides an alphabetical reference for all native ActionScript APIs for the Adobe technology platform runtimes: Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR—as well as the Adobe Flex framework APIs. Use this guide both as an API reference and a tool to learn about the ActionScript APIs available within the runtimes.

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.

Since the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) was released at the end of February, we now have a stable platform on which to build desktop applications with our existing web skills. A number of people have already started and the Adobe AIR Marketplace is filling with AIR applications by the day.

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.

With the release of ColdFusion MX 7 came the introduction of the Application.cfc ColdFusion component. This component replaced the traditional Application.cfm and OnRequestEnd.cfm ColdFusion application templates. Furthermore, if Application.cfc is present, both of these templates are ignored by the application.

In addition to replacing the Application.cfm, the Application.cfc introduced a number of built in methods that handle specific events. These events, as discussed in detail below, allow for a greater control over events within the application.

Application Variables

The THIS scope in the Application.cfc contains several built-in variables that allow you to set the properties of the application.

The following cfscript briefly outlines the variables that you can set to control the application’s behaviour.

<cfscript>
//the application name (should be unique)
THIS.name = "ApplicationName";
//how long the application variables persist
THIS.applicationTimeout = createTimeSpan(0,2,0,0);
//define whether client variables are enabled
THIS.clientManagement = false;
//where should we store them, if enabled?
THIS.clientStorage = "registry"; //cookie||registry||datasource
//define where cflogin information should persist
THIS.loginStorage = "session"; //cookie||session
//define whether session variables are enabled
THIS.sessionManagement = true;
//how long the session variables persist?
THIS.sessionTimeout = createTimeSpan(0,0,20,0);
//define whether to set cookies on the browser?
THIS.setClientCookies = true;
//should cookies be domain specific
//i.e. *.domain.com or www.domain.com
THIS.setDomainCookies = false;
//should we try to block cross-site scripting?
THIS.scriptProtect = false;
//should we secure our JSON calls?
THIS.secureJSON = false;
//use a prefix in front of JSON strings?
THIS.secureJSONPrefix = "";
//used to help ColdFusion work with missing files
//and directory indexes. tells ColdFusion not to call
//onMissingTemplate method.
THIS.welcomeFileList = "";
//define custom coldfusion mappings.
//Keys are mapping names, values are full paths
THIS.mappings = structNew();
//define a list of custom tag paths.
THIS.customTagPaths = "";
</cfscript>

Method Summary

Below is a brief discussion of the built-in event methods available to the Application.cfc. Since the Application.cfc is a regular ColdFusion component, you can also implement your own methods alongside the built in ones (assuming the names are uniquely different).

The onApplicationStart Method

Runs when the application first starts up: when the first request for a page is processed or the first CFC method is invoked by an event.

<cffunction name="onApplicationStart" returnType="boolean" output="false">
	<cfreturn true />
</cffunction>

This method is typically used to initialise code; for example to to set variables, such as datasource, into the APPLICATION scope, or create Singleton instances of ColdFusion components.

For example:

The following example creates structures in tha application scope to store general configuration settings and Singleton objects that can be later referenced by the application framework.

<cffunction name="onApplicationStart" returnType="boolean" output="false">
	<cfscript>
	// INITIALISE CONFIGURATION VARIABLES AND APPLICATION BUSINESS COMPONENTS
	// **********************************************************************
	// LOAD COMMON SITE VARIABLES INTO APPLICATION SCOPE
	// create structure to hold configuration settings
	APPLICATION.strConfig = structNew();
	//site-wide datasource(s)
	APPLICATION.strConfig.datasource = "DatasourceName";
	// default records per page for pagination
	APPLICATION.strConfig.recordsPerPage = 15;
	// **********************************************************************
	// LOAD PERSISTENT OBJECTS INTO APPLICATION SCOPE
	// data for object instantiation
	strArgs	= structNew(); // flush strArgs
	strArgs.datasource = APPLICATION.strConfig.datasource;
 
	// create structure to hold objects
	APPLICATION.strObjs = structNew();
	APPLICATION.strObjs.objUserManager = createObject("component","com.whatley.user.UserManager").init(argumentCollection=strArgs);
	//etc...
 
	// instantiate utility service objects
	APPLICATION.strObjs.objEmailServices = createObject("component","com.whatley.service.Email");
	APPLICATION.strObjs.objFileServices = createObject("component","com.whatley.service.File");
	APPLICATION.strObjs.objQueryServices = createObject("component","com.whatley.service.Query");
	//etc...
 
	// native coldfusion objects
	APPLICATION.strObjs.objServiceFactory = createObject("java","coldfusion.server.ServiceFactory");
 
	// **********************************************************************
	return true;
	</cfscript>
</cffunction>

Since the objects above are created as Singletons, we do not have to create or destroy objects throughout the application, but simply reference the object held in memory. This is efficient, but of course, would not be suitable for per-session objects, such as shopping carts.

For example:

Referencing and invoking an object from the APPLICATION scope:

<cfinvoke object="APPLICATION.strObjs.objUserManager" method="getUser" returnvariable="qryGetUser">
	<cfargument name="userId" value="#SESSION.strUser.userId#" />
</cfinvoke>

The onApplicationEnd Method

Runs when the application stops: when the application times out or the service is stopped.

<cffunction name="onApplicationEnd" returnType="void" output="false">
	<cfargument name="applicationScope" required="true" />
</cffunction>

This method is typically used to clean-up currently activities, save the current state of the application to a database or log the application’s end to a file. The latter can be useful to help determine when and why an application ended.

Below is a simple example of how you could implement a simple log:

<cffunction name="onApplicationEnd" returnType="void" output="false">
	<cfargument name="applicationScope" required="true" />
        <cflog file="#THIS.Name#" type="Information"
        	text="Application #ARGUMENTS.applicationScope.applicationName# Ended" />
</cffunction>

Notes:

• The method is not associated with an individual request so you cannot use it to display data to a user.
• If you call this method explicity, ColdFusion does not end the application, but does execute the code within the method.
• The method can access the SERVER scope directly, but does not have access to the SESSION and REQUEST scopes.

The onMissingTemplate Method

Triggered when the user requests a ColdFusion template that doesn’t exist.

<cffunction name="onMissingTemplate" returnType="boolean" output="false">
	<cfargument name="targetpage" required="true" type="string" />
	<cfreturn true />
</cffunction>

ColdFusion invokes this method when it encounters a file not found condition, that is, when a URL specifies a CFML page that does not exist. This is an important addition to ColdFusion 8 and allows missing template errors (also known as HTTP 404 errors) to be captured more efficiently by the application framework.

The onRequestStart Method

Runs before the request is processed.

<cffunction name="onRequestStart" returnType="boolean" output="false">
	<cfargument name="thePage" type="string" required="true" />
	<cfreturn true />
</cffunction>

This method is great for user authorisation and login handling and for request specific variable initialisation. For example, you could use this method to log statistics to a database (performance and usage).

As this method runs at the beginning of a request, we can also use it to fire other events. In the example below, I reinitialise the Application which enables me to refresh objects held in memory that may have changed during code development or release.

<cffunction name="onRequestStart" returnType="void" output="false">
	<cfscript>
	//flush the application scope
	if ((CGI.server_name == "localhost") || (structKeyExists(URL,'refresh') && structKeyExists(URL,'password') && URL.password == "p455w0rd"))
	{
		onApplicationStart();
	}
	return true;
	</cfscript>
</cffunction>

The onRequest Method

Runs before the request is processed, but after onRequestStart.

<cffunction name="onRequest" returnType="void">
	<cfargument name="thePage" type="string" required="true" />
	<cfinclude template="#ARGUMENTS.thePage#" />
</cffunction>

This event handler provides an optional request filter mechanism for ColdFusion page requests. Use it to intercept requests to target pages and override the default behavior of running the requested pages. You can use this method to do preprocessing that is required for all requests. Typical uses include filtering and modifying request page contents (such as removing extraneous white space), or creating a switching mechanism that determines the exact page to display based on available parameters.

The onRequestEnd Method

Runs at the end of the request when all pages have been processed.

<!--- Runs at end of request --->
<cffunction name="onRequestEnd" returnType="void" output="false">
	<cfargument name="thePage" type="string" required="true" />
</cffunction>

This method can be useful for gathering performance metrics, or for displaying dynamic footer information (although I wouldn’t generally put display code in an Application.cfc).

For example:

Log the CGI variables to a database table.

<cffunction name="onRequestEnd" returnType="void" output="false">
	<cfset var qryInsertStats = queryNew('tempCol')>
	<cfquery name="qryInsertStats" datasource="#APPLICATION.strConfig.datasource#">
	INSERT INTO tbl_site_stats (template,query_string,referer,user_agent,remote_addr,datetime)
	VALUES
	(
		<cfqueryparam value="#CGI.PATH_INFO#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
		<cfqueryparam value="#CGI.QUERY_STRING#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
		<cfqueryparam value="#CGI.HTTP_REFERER#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
		<cfqueryparam value="#CGI.HTTP_USER_AGENT#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
		<cfqueryparam value="#CGI.REMOTE_ADDR#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_varchar" />
		<cfqueryparam value="#now()#" cfsqltype="cf_sql_datetime" />
	)
	</cfquery>
</cffunction>

The onError Method

Triggered when an error is encountered that is not caught by a try/catch block.

<!--- Runs on error --->
<cffunction name="onError" returnType="void" output="false">
	<cfargument name="exception" required="true" />
	<cfargument name="eventname" type="string" required="true" />
	<cfdump var="#ARGUMENTS#" />
        <cfabort />
</cffunction>

This method is used to handle errors in an application-specific manner. This method overrides any error handlers that you set in the ColdFusion Administrator or in cferror tags. It does not override try/catch blocks.

For example:

The following displays a friendly, static error page to the user if it is not a development server whilst also logging the error. If the error is on development, simply dump the error to screen for debugging.

<cffunction name="onError" returnType="void" output="true">
	<cfargument name="exception" required="true" />
	<cfargument name="eventName" type="string" required="true" />
	<cfif CGI.server_name neq "localhost" and CGI.server_name neq "127.0.0.1">
		<!--- Live application, handle error --->
		<cfinclude template="error/error.htm">
		<!--- Log all errors. --->
	        <cflog file="#THIS.Name#" type="error"
	            text="Event Name: #ARGUMENTS.Eventname#" >
	        <cflog file="#THIS.Name#" type="error"
	            text="Message: #ARGUMENTS.Exception.message#">
	        <cflog file="#THIS.Name#" type="error"
	            text="Root Cause Message: #ARGUMENTS.Exception.rootcause.message#">
	<cfelse>
		<!--- dump error for Staging and Development --->
		<cfif len(ARGUMENTS.eventName)>
			<cfdump var="#ARGUMENTS.eventName#" />
		</cfif>
		<cfdump var="#ARGUMENTS.exception#" />
	</cfif>
</cffunction>

The onSessionStart Method

Runs when your session starts.

<cffunction name="onSessionStart" returnType="void" output="false">
</cffunction>

This method is used for initialising SESSION-scoped data, such as a shopping basket and application form.

For example:

<cffunction name="onSessionStart" returnType="void" output="false">
	<cfscript>
	SESSION.start = now();
	SESSION.strShoppingBasket = structNew();
	SESSION.strShoppingBasket.items = 0;
	</cfscript>
</cffunction>

The onSessionEnd Method

Runs when session ends

<cffunction name="onSessionEnd" returnType="void" output="false">
	<cfargument name="sessionScope" type="struct" required="true" />
	<cfargument name="appScope" type="struct" required="false" />
</cffunction>

Use this method for any clean-up activities when the session ends. A session ends when the session is inactive for the session time-out period. You can, for example, save session-related data, such as shopping basket contents or whether the user has not completed an order, in a database, or do any other required processing based on the user’s status. You might also want to log the end of the session, or other session related information, to a file for diagnostic use.

Adobe Livedocs has a whole section dedicated to the Application.cfc.

I have created an example Application.cfc, which is available for download.

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) is to expand its scope of collaboration with Adobe to advance web standards. Having successfully completed its initial goals for assisting Adobe’s Dreamweaver team in supporting Web standards, the Web Standards Project’s Dreamweaver Task Force will be renamed the Adobe Task Force to reflect its widened scope. The Adobe Task Force will collaborate with Adobe on all of the company’s products that output code or content to the Web, and will continue to advocate compliance with Web Standards and accessibility guidelines by those who use Adobe’s products to design and build Web sites and applications.

You can read the full press release on the Web Standards Project website.

Widening the collaboration between standards experts, who are also product experts, and Adobe is an exciting step forward in the maturation of the Web. This will hopefully lead to full standards support in not only Adobe-based products such as Dreamweaver and AIR, but leading browser and web editor suppliers such as Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple.

The THIS scope in the Application.cfc contains several built-in variables that allow you to set the properties of the application; the name, session management etc. With the release ColdFusion 8 comes the introduction of application-based pathing in the form of the THIS.mappings and THIS.customTagPaths variables.

The THIS.mappings variable can specify a structure that contains ColdFusion mappings. These settings take precedence over the mappings defined by ColdFusion Administrator Server Settings > Mappings page for the current application. Each structure element consists of the logical path as the key and the absolute path as the value. To use this variable, you must set the Enable Per Application Settings option on the ColdFusion Administrator Server Settings > Settings page.

For example:

<cfset THIS.mappings['/com'] = "C:\Inetpub\com" />

This is syntactically equivalent to using the structInsert() function:

<cfset structInsert(THIS.mappings, '/com', 'C:\Inetpub\com') />

The THIS.customTagPaths variable can specify a list that contains ColdFusion custom tag paths. These settings take precedence over the custom tag paths defined by the ColdFusion Administrator Server Settings > Mappings page for the current application. To use this variable, you must set the Enable Per Application Settings option on the ColdFusion Administrator Server Settings > Settings page.

For example:

<cfset THIS.customTagPaths = "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\myAppOne\customTags" />

Since we can specify a list, this is also valid:

<cfset THIS.customTagPaths = "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\myAppOne\customTags,C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\myAppTwo\customTags" />

Alternatively, we could represent the list as:

<cfset THIS.customTagPaths = "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\myAppOne\customTags" />
<cfset THIS.customTagPaths = listAppend(THIS.customTagPaths, "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\myAppTwo\customTags" />

For a long time, ColdFusion developers have needed the ability to define application-level settings actually in the application itself. These two new application-based pathing variables bring the ColdFusion developer a step closer to being able to produce out-of-the-box applications that can install in shared environments with little fuss and, more importantly, without the need to access the ColdFusion Adminsitrator to create the necessary mappings and custom tag paths.

New Atlanta is announcing today, at CFUnited Europe, a ColdFusion technology conference in London, U.K., that they will be creating and distributing a free open-source Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) version of BlueDragon, their ColdFusion-compatible web application server.

You can read the full release here:

http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/open_source/faq.cfm

Will Adobe follow suit with their ColdFusion server technology? They have done similar things with the BlazeDS, so it stands to reason that ColdFusion could follow the same route.

Terrence Ryan sees things differently, however, and has a good article here:

Yawn, BlueDragon Goes Open Source.

Silverlight aims to compete with Adobe Flash and the presentation components of AJAX. It also competes with Sun Microsystems’ JavaFX, which was launched a few days after Silverlight.

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.

Microsoft is finally making real efforts to woo the designer community who have traditionally worshipped the Adobe and Mac product ranges. One new product that addresses this previously overlooked community is Silverlight, which uses the XAML technology and is touted as Microsoft’s Flash killer. For anyone who is keen to listen, Microsoft proposes that Silverlight will achieve similar results to Flash, but it does so in an entirely different way and has different aims. So, the big question is, will Microsoft be able to break the dominance of Adobe’s Flash platform, that is available on the PC, Mac and mobile devices alike? I’m sure the jury is out on that one, but it can be said it is an uphill task.

So what is Silverlight and XAML proposition? How does it vary from Flash?

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.

Not much difference to Flash so far…

Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) is a declarative XML-based language used to initialize structured values and objects. XAML is used extensively in the .NET Framework 3.0 technologies, particularly in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), where it is used as a user interface markup language to define UI elements, data binding, eventing, and other features, and in Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF), in which workflows themselves can be defined using XAML.

Not much difference to Adobes’s MXML…

Browser support…

A frequently asked question is which browsers and operating systems will it run on? If XAML is limited in this area, its usefulness in the web world will also be significantly limited. Previous encarnations of XAML, were limited and justifiably criticised as it would only work with an ActiveX control. However, this has now been resolved with support for Firefox, Opera, Safari and Netscape, Windows and OSX alike. Support is provided by a downloadable plugin, much like Flash!

Like Flash…

Silverlight enables web developers to create visually rich user interfaces and animations, play video clips and stream media within the web page, again, much like Flash! But it is different! The comparison doesn’t end there. Animations are organised using timelines and frames within the tool…how else would you organise an animation without timelines?!

Like Flex…but not!

Where things differ from Flash are the tools used to develop the Silverlight applications. Silverlight is supposed to be a way of designing and building rich user interfaces. However, standard HTML elements are missing. The way you design a particular interface is to build a standard HTML form in your favourite editor, e.g. Dreamweaver CS3, and then open this page in Silverlight to add the visual enhancements that your design requires. This sounds complicated to say the least. In comparison, Flash has a brilliant tool and framework called Flex that does this far more gracefully and with the development of Thermo, designers can really feel comfortable in the web application development mix.

Silverlight applications will also run on mobile devices, but the plan is for the applications to only run within a mobile web browser. This is unlike Adobe who are feaverishly developing the AIR runtime to allow Flash applications to run independently of the browser environment and offline.

So, Web 2.0 and beyond with Silverlight and XAML may be somewhat jumping the gun. You may say that there is nothing new or innovative with the Silverlight offering. It does, however, serve to emphasise how important the Rich Internet arena is becoming or indeed has become.

For a long time now Adobe’s Flex IDE has been the one of the only tools for developing ActionScript 3 applications. Now there is an alternative in the form of PowerFlasher’s FDT 3.0.

Developed for internal by PowerFlasher, the FDT (Flash Development Tool) wowed freelancers so much that the company decided to launch it as a commercial product. Like Flex Builder, FDT is built upon the Eclipse framework and therefore has many similarities with other Eclipse-based tools, not least JDT upon which it is based.

It is great to see competing tools out there on the market and it can only serve to strengthen the popularity of the technology.

PowerFlasher’s tool can be found at http://fdt.powerflasher.com. It is really worth a look.