What exactly is Adobe Air? I've seen a lot of people talking about it and I've even seen applications for it but I'm still not entirely sure what makes it unique or how it is different from other languages. Can someone please give me the concise version from a programmer's point of view?
Edit: I wasn't familiar with Flex so I found this nice explanation: http://www.onflex.org/ted/2008/01/what-is-flex.php
In a nutshell.
Start with the assumption that you know what Flex and Actionscript are. Then take the fact that they both run exclusively in your browser and to all intents and purposes are for building web apps.
Now assume you want to develop the same app, with the same language and user interface resources, but run it as a desktop app on a workstion (PC, Mac, or Linux interchangeably).
AIR is what you add (as a link library) to Flex and Actionscript to accomplish that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Integrated_Runtime Write cross-platform desktop apps in Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax.
Adobe Air its Flash Runtime that can run Flash inside it and provide access to your operation system.
Adobe Air can be used for gaming and software as usual Flash. Its stand alone flash player with extended and reach functionality. For example you can develop flash app that will interact with filesystem or hardware.
Also its support native extensions so you can extend Air using native C/Java libraries.
air can be produced as exe for windows, app for mac, ipa for ios, apk for android, linux with limitations and blackberry.
