How AIR should NOT be used
Just checked out the Shu player. It`s an application that packages your AIR application as a standalone application and extends it`s functionality a bit.
This might sound intriguing first but it really only shows how people are not getting the advatages of AIR. Why is this a bad solution?
- standalone means the AIR runtime is packaged into your app which bloats the installation size. This is one main advatage of AIR. You install the runtime once and then all the AIR apps are small in size
- You`ll loose the smooth seamless installation functionality of AIR apps
- What about autoupdate?
- What if the runtime updates?
In the end this is nothing more then the good old projector tools and I think if you want something like this there is nothing better than Zinc 3.0.
That said I kind of understand the motivation behind this tool. On the first glance it adds some of the most missing features to AIR mainly being able to run native programs.
But as it at the same time destroys the real power of AIR this is a no go for me. Keeping thumbs crossed that AIR 2.0 soves this by adding those features.