ID8

A HTML Adobe AIR App without Flex – pt2

Anatomy of an Adobe AIR Application:

The main bits you’ll need to get a HTML AIR application going are:

An application descriptor XML file:
There is a template of this file in the templates directory or a sample file in the samples directory.
Copy the descriptor-template.xml or descriptor-sample.xml file from the templates or samples directory to the application directory you created earlier (in this example the Applicationstestapp directory. This descriptor file can be called anything, I renamed mine to application.xml

The files to make your app do something:
Things like html files, images, javascript, style sheets etc. All these files go into the application directory you created earlier and everything needs to be referenced relatively.

The structure I ended up with in my testapp directory was:

    testapp
        icon
        images
        scripts
        styles
        application.xml
        index.html
        login.html

Frameworks
You may also want to use some of the files Adobe supplies in the frameworks and samples directories. See the Readme.txt file for descriptions of what’s in these directories.

I used from frameworks:
AIRAliases.js – Provides “alias” definitions that allow you to access the AIR runtime classes from Javascript.
AIRIntrospector.js – Assists in AIR application development, allowing you to inspect JavaScript properties, view the HTML DOM, and view source files at run time.

I used from samples:
badge – A directory containing sample files for the AIR seamless install feature, which lets you distribute an AIR application directly from a web page.

Command line tools:
You will use these to create self-signed certificates, to test and compile your apps.
These are in the bin directory of the AIR installation.
adl (adl.exe on Windows) – The AIR Debug Launcher (ADL) allows you to test an AIR application without having to package and install it.
adt (adt.bat on Windows) – The AIR Developer Tool (ADT) packages your application as an .air file for distribution. This is also used for creating self-signed certificates.

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