Today, Adobe announced a new product: Adobe Air. The basic concept of this is that you can compile a web application that you’ve developed to be a run-time on a users system. Adobe accomplishes this through distribution of the WebKit HTML rendering engine. Basically, your apps run like they would in a web browser, except that they look more like they are a standalone desktop application.
Adobe has done a good job at allowing Air applications integrate well with the desktop.
Adobe isn’t the first to use internet delivery technologies for desktop applications. Mozilla’s XULRunner allows developers to create and package multi-platform programs based off the same technology that powers Firefox. However, Adobe has done a good job at making it simple to publish very traditional AJAX apps as desktop apps.
Adobe’s big problem is they only support Windows and Mac. There is no Linux support, at least not yet. One of Adobe Air’s big selling point is that it makes it easy to create cross-platform applications. However, without Linux support, the most Adobe can advertise is dual-platform apps.
For a great demo Air app, look at this complex YUI example.