Future of Web Design 2007: Introducing Adobe Apollo
Wednesday, April 18, 2007Adobe 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
Share this
some nice adobe apollo based widgets can be found here:
http://affiliate-blog.amazon.de/2007/04/erste_adobe_apo.html
(sorry text is in german),
If you scroll all the way down, you can see the webbased flash widgets and these can be copied with one click to the adobe apollo environment. And the widgets become part of your MAC OS X or Windows Desktop – with just a single click.
Marcus
on April 18th, 2007