Today (February 25, 2008) Adobe has finally released AIR 1.0 into the wild.

It has been a wonderful experience to see this technology mature in Adobe’s Apollo pre-release program and to take active part in this process. I want to congratulate the Adobe AIR team and all pre-release program members for their great work and valuable input into finally getting AIR through the door! Woohoo!

You can get Adobe AIR 1.0 here:
http://get.adobe.com/air/

Flex Builder 3 and the open source Flex 3 SDK was also released:

More information on Flex 3 SDK
More information on Flex Builer 3

What is really nice to see is that AIR pre-release program enabled developers outside Adobe to create AIR development tools that are available to us all from day one.

Today I recommend you to download this ultimate set of free tools and libraries for AIR 1.0 Javascript development:

Aptana Studio 1.1 IDE:
http://www.aptana.com/studio/download

Aptana Studio 1.1 Plugin for Adobe AIR 1.0 (includes SDK):
http://www.aptana.com/air/

The Aptana looks very polished. It is now the most complete solution for delivering Javascript based AIR applications, so don’t hesitate and start downloading

After installing Aptana and the AIR plugin you will probably need some libraries to speed up your application development.

Well guess what? ExtJS, one of the most complete Javascript UI frameworks on the planet has also updated their framework to version 2.0.2 which brings exciting new features and full compatibility with final Adobe AIR 1.0 release.

ExtJS 2.0.2 downloads and documentation:
http://extjs.com/download

You can see AIR 1.0 and ExtJS in action by downloading this great (and actually useful) task management application:

ExtJS in action – Simple Tasks 2 (AIR application)
http://extjs.com/playpen/STasks2.air
More information

If you like to further enhance your AIR development experience with ExtJS you will probably need a good code completion solution. Aptana already comes with a built in code completion engine that is pretty good for custom Javascript development, but if you want to work exclusively with ExtJS you might consider installing one of additional code completion plugins.

Spket IDE is the most complete ExtJS development solution that not only gives you code completion but also generates dynamic documentation from your latest ExtJS sources. Free for personal use – I highly recommend it.

To install Spket for Aptana Studio 1.1 do the following:

• Start Aptana and navigate the application menu to: Help → Software Updates → Find and Install… → Search for new features to install → New remote site…
• Name: “Spket”, Url: “http://www.spket.com/update/”
• Continue through the install process
• Restart Aptana Studio

To enable ExtJS code completion inside Spket do the following:

• Window → Preferences → Spket → JavaScript Profiles → New
• Enter “ExtJS” and click OK
• Select “ExtJS” and click “Add Library”, then choose “ExtJS” from the dropdown
• Select “ExtJS” and click “Add File”, then choose the “ext.jsb” file in your “./ext-2.x/source” directory
• Set the new ExtJS profile as the default by selecting it an clicking the “Default” button on the right-hand side of the “JavaScript Profiles” dialog.
• Restart Aptana
• Create a new JS file and type: Ext. and you should get the Ext Code completion options.

Spket is now set up to use as an alternate Javascript editor inside Aptana Studio. To open a .js file in Spket right click on the file and select “Open with…” → “Spket JavaScript Editor”.

However, if you would like Spket to be the default editor for all of your .js files (including File > New…) do the following:

• Window → Preferences → General → Editors → File Associations
• Select “*.js” from “File Types”
• Select “Spket JavaScript Editor” and click “Default”
• Select “OK” to close the Preferences window

Other Libraries

The following libraries are also fully compatible with Adobe AIR 1.0:

Dojo Toolkit 1.1.0 Beta 1
More information

That’s it, enjoy your new development environment and build great AIR applications!

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 9:40 pm and is filed under AIR, Applications, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.