Adobe releases AIR 2.7 – good news for your resume

Adobe today announced the availability for AIR 2.7, which includes the SDK and the associated runtimes.

The focus on recent releases, this release, and (I’d presume) upcoming releases, is continued emphasis on mobile/smartphone/tablet computing. Having recognized the mobile revolution years ago, even prior to the iPhone craze, Adobe continues to make a smart strategic move by combining the ubiquity of Flash and the massive collective talent surrounding the platform.

A core advantage I used to emphasize to those evaluating Flex back in its early years was that it was relatively easy to ensure the same experience/look and feel regardless of OS/Browser combination. Though with advancements in things like jQuery, that argument isn’t as strong.

If you stuck with HTML/CSS/JavaScript – at least you were still sticking with the same languages as you battled trying to get your stuff to look the same on multiple browsers.

Moving onto mobile (assuming you’re making native apps), the multi-browser UI challenges pale in comparison to multi-mobile-OS’s. To start, just dealing with multiple SDKs and programming languages presents a formidable challenge.

Enter Flex & AIR for mobile. As a Flex developer you’re able to create experiences for the big mobile platforms, but  more importantly from a business perspective – your time to market with products and updates can be achieved with fewer resources and faster turn around time simply due to a unified code base.

What’s new in AIR 2.7

iOS:

• Improved iOS performance (up to 4x).
• Improved ease with debugging iOS applications.

Android:

• Support for SD card application installation on Android.

Desktop:

• Media Measurement – analytics regarding how much video is watched, paused, skipped, and other actions
• Acoustic echo cancellation (e.g. for apps that support VOIP abilities and you want to cancel out the sound from the speakers)
• Improved HTML content navigation