Migrating Flex Applications on the Desktop with Adobe Air

Abstract

One of the characteristics of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) developed with Flex is that they actually act as client-side applications. In fact, an RIA, after having been requested by users by launching the URL on a common browser, is downloaded onto the client and resides on the client for its entire life cycle. The interfaces created for RIAs are very rich and user-friendly, and many of the operations you use for desktop applications can also be developed for this type of application. For example, in Solutions 7-6 and 7-7, you saw that the classic operations of drag and drop are simple and quick to manage. The difference between a client-side application and a desktop application is small. The main reason why an RIA cannot be considered a desktop application is that it is loaded and run within the Flash Player that is a plug-in of the browser. This difference prevents the developer from using some of the functions that are native to desktop applications and very useful for most projects. The access to the file system to load, save, and edit local files, and the possibility of changing the appearance of the windows of the operating system are impossible because of the nature of RIAs.