Andrew Shorten @ Adobe

Just over a week ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with Iain Dodsworth, founder of TweetDeck – one of the most-downloaded applications that have been built using Adobe AIR.

In this video Iain talks about how and why he went about creating TweetDeck, why he built it using Adobe AIR, what worked well (and what didn’t) during development, what he and the team have learnt from the whole process and his plans for the future of TweetDeck. He also offers up some advice for anyone else thinking about embarking on a startup venture.

The full version (below) is approximately 20 minutes in length, but I’m working on a shorter highlight video that hopefully we’ll get posted on Adobe TV – I’ll post a link to that in due course.

Last week we released an updated version of the AIR runtime, version 1.5.2, which includes bug fixes related to reliability, compatibility and security – the details of which can be found on the Adobe AIR team blog and in the developer release notes.

This minor update does however also make a change to the install dialogue that is displayed to the user when installing an AIR application. In versions prior to AIR 1.5.2, the user would be presented with the following dialogue when installing an application that had been signed with a certificate-authority issued certificate:

We received feedback from some end-users to suggest that this dialogue, which verified the publisher identity, but which also warned of unrestricted system access, made them unsure as to whether or not the application should be trusted, even if they recognized and trusted the publisher of the application.

From an application publisher perspective, there was no option in the AIR deployment process to package an application with an alternative level of system access, hence additional reassurance was often required, in the form of step-by-step install guides or FAQ documents published online, to reassure the end user that the application was OK to install.

With the release of AIR 1.5.2, the install dialogue for all newly installed applications (i.e. not just those that have been updated to work specifically with the new version), signed with a certificate-authority issued certificate, is as follows:

This simplified dialogue removes the specific warning about unrestricted access, but still (correctly) challenges the user to answer the question “Are you sure you want to install this application to your computer?”. Most end-users I’ve spoken with understand that “installing” something requires a certain level of trust and I think the revised dialogue is more in line with existing OS dialogues and more appropriate to the level of risk involved.

For application publishers it should remove some of the overhead that was required to support end-users during the installation process and remove a concern that might otherwise have put them off completing the installation.

It should be noted that there has been no change to the dialogue for self-signed applications – this dialogue, quite rightly, makes it clear to the end-user that there is increased risk associated with the installation of the application.

You can download the latest version of the AIR runtime from here.

We announced some pretty significant new numbers in relation to adoption of the Flash Platform today – the full press release can be found on our website, but here are the all important stats:

55% of computers already have Flash Player 10

“Adobe Flash Player 10 was installed on more than 55 percent of computers worldwide in just the first two months of its release.” For more information see the published penetration statistics here.

Over 100 million installations of AIR

“In less than one year after its initial release, there have been more than 100 million installations of Adobe AIR.”

1 million downloads of developer SDKs and tools

“In the last 12 months, there have been over 1 million downloads of the AIR software development kit (SDK), the free open source Flex framework and Adobe Flex® Builder™ by developers.”

80% of online videos viewed using Flash

“Adobe Flash Player content reaches over 98 percent of Internet-enabled desktops, and over 80 percent of online videos worldwide are viewed using Adobe Flash technology.”

Today saw the release of a new desktop Twitter client – *chirp. It’s not like we needed another desktop client for Twitter, what with TweetDeck, DestroyTwitter, Spaz, Twhirl and others already available, but the unique feature of this new application is that it runs on Windows Vista only

Whilst there are undoubtedly many use-cases for building native OS desktop applications, I’m not sure that a Twitter client demands it, even if the animations are ‘beautiful’ (I don’t know if they are, as I can’t run the application here on Mac OS X).

Looking at this from both an application developer and end-user perspective, it seems pretty clear why AIR offers such a compelling solution. Take a look at my experience at trying to acquire a Twitter desktop application from the web:

*chirp – what do I do with this?

DestroyTwitter (built on Adobe AIR) – badge-based installer works on Mac, Windows and Linux.

Bottom line: if you want to reach the maximum potential audience for your application, build it on Adobe AIR.

Last year I posted an entry about the launch of Fiat EcoDrive, an AIR application that can help drivers adjust their driving style so as to improve fuel efficiency, reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions and save money on fuel.

As a follow up to that, earlier this month Serge Jespers and I spent some time with Claudio Annicchiarico, who heads up Fiat’s Digital team in the UK, and also the creative development team at digital agency AKQA who built the application.

We created this video to go behind the scenes on the project, to understand why Fiat wanted to build EcoDrive and then from AKQA’s perspective to understand how they approached the project, the tools and technologies they used and what they learnt from developing the application.

The video is approx 20 minutes in length – if you’d like to hear what Fiat had to say and see a demo of the EcoDrive application then watch the first 7 minutes; if you’re interested in the development team who built the application and how they approached the project then make sure you watch the whole thing!

Do you have a cool Flex or AIR application that we should highlight in a future video – if so, please get in touch.