How would you improve Adobe AIR and the Flash Platform?
The release of AIR2 is just around the corner and it has a ton of new (community-requested) features. When we first released AIR a lot of people asked if it was possible to launch and communicate with native processes. We also heard requests for things like better printing support, USB volume detection and multi-touch. Despite the fact that it may not alway be very obvious and that we can’t add every single feature request to a next release, we do listen. The same thing goes for all the Flash Platform tools and runtimes.
To make it easier for you to get your ideas to us we launched a new site. Adobe Ideas allows you to submit ideas on how to improve the Flash Platform as well as vote and comment on existing ideas from others in the community.
I already voted for my favorites and have some ideas lined up to post. What are your favorites?
Update: I just posted 2 simple ideas that I’d love to see in a future version of AIR.
- First of all I’d like to see us add modal windows that require the user’s interaction before continuing with the app.
Click to vote. - I’d also love the ability to add icons to the menu bar on OSX.
Click to vote.
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First off, I would modularize the Flash player, so that it can possibly load additional modules and cache them, like a real full-blown web rendering engine. This way, the Flash player download would still be very small but we could develop Flex apps with integrated HTML.
I would also love to see Flex Builder plugins for other environments than Eclipse. Eclipse sucks, and when you are a Java developer using a real IDE like IntelliJ, it’s a pain to switch back and forth between Flash Builder and IntelliJ all the time.
Last but not least, ActionScript needs a serious update: generics, enums, abstract classes, a “?.” operator… it misses a lot of modern features. It would also be cool if it was possible to compile other languages like Groovy to the Flash VM.
Just my 2 cents…
I posted my second idea. Too bad the Flash player and ActionScript are not in the Flash platform ;o)
I actually have one feature request fro Flash.
We have different loaders for sounds, movieclips and images.
So with Loader we have loadBytes, it allows to load some assets that were retrieved trough different means then loading from URL. Very useful in different custom assets managing solutions. But problem with it is that it is only asynchronous even having it’s data I can’t get asset from it right here and now and need to add onComplete listening scheme. Often it is not very conviniant and makes code more complex then it should be.
There may be some underlying problem with it but if asset actually has a class assigned it is possible to retrieve the class and get instance right away. Why it is not possible to get instance right away from bytes?
So what I want is possibility to make loadBytes both asynchronous and synchronous(blocking) somehow.
Then we have Sound class. It does have load methods that loads mp3 from URL but unfortunately it does not have loadBytes like Loader has :( This sometimes limits way in which sound assets can be managed and stored. So would be good to have loadBytes for it. I can’t imagine why it does not have that if it is able to load mp3 from URL… And as with above it would be good if it had synchronous and asynchronous version for loadBytes.
So those are two things that come to my mind right away.
I am missing the Flash Player (including ActionScript) category too.
I know we can add feature requests for the player in the bug-base but the new Ideas site is far more convenient.
My two requests have already been posted: The ability to create portable AIR applications and the ability to load SQLite modules (or at least have Adobe add FTS to SQLite)
I’ve posted one for AIR:
True Multi-Threading support.
I agree 200% with Sebastien.
I would suggest (although Flex/Air specific) to add new components and to add new functionality to existing components. If Adobe really thinks that every Flex developer should become a component developer then I’m afraid those developers will most probably become Silverlight or HTML5 users.
What I really want for the Flash Platform is hardware accelerated 3D for making games. If this adds too much to the player download, just add it as a module that can be downloaded if the HW3D API is used? The Octoshape plugin has already been distributed this way, so why not Adobe’s own software as well? ;-)
J
+ worker threads!
Support for dynamic runtime proxies, so we can finally get AOP in actionscript!
This is slightly off-topic but I don’t know how else to talk to an Adobe person.
I’m a Flash Developer. I’m a big supporter on blogs where Flash is concerned and I defend it often. Also, I work for a large Media (TV) corporation and I constantly have to defend Flash there as well. The Flash-hate is palpable and rapidly growing.
I just want to make the point that timing is crucial here. The World is rapidly turning away from Flash due to Apple’s vendetta. It’s working.
I know 10.1 is in development and no one wants to put out a product before it’s time – but if you wait much longer, Flash penetration is going to start spiraling down because the iPad will have to start being counted toward penetration. Once that spiraling starts, the Flash-haters are going to pounce. And it may be too late. 10.1 being perfect won’t matter because the time will have passed.
PLEASE – HURRY! Maybe put out a Beta on Android or something… anything to get some positive press. We’re getting killed out here on the front lines