Simon Pearson - minor9th.com

Future of Web Design 2007: Introducing Adobe Apollo

posted in Design, Future Of Web Design 2007, Web

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Adobe Apollo
Mike Downey

Apollo allows developers to deploy rich web apps to the desktop through a runtime environment

Examples:

EBay Desktop
Adobe flex app
Still able to display the user-entered HTML within the flash app
Apollo uses webkit HTML rendering engine (same as Safari etc) integrated with the flash engine

Nice functionality
- search results kept in separate pane to the result you’re looking at to speed up browsing
- multiple images are shown like a deck of cards which shuffles when you click on them. Pretty!

Design changes put the business at risk through new functionality
Solution: use beta version for users to feed back on. Downside: expensive to buy new server farm etc

Desktop app is client side so can use existing backend functionality
(will changes to desktop app scare users away too, though?)

Apollo has transparancy support

App stack makes it easy for developers to develop.

Functionalities:
Offline/occasionally connected
File IO
Custom window chrome shape/alpha
System notifications and alerts - eg when you’ve been outbid on an item on ebay [neat]
Multi-window support
Drag and drop/clipboard access
Applications can run in background
Network stack
Application update
DRM

Workflow
- Develop/debug in IDE
- Package app for deployment
- Distribute / update

Tools:
- IDEs such as Flex Builder, DreamWeaver, Eclipse
- Text editors
- Free command ine tools & SDK