You created your AIR file… so now what? The easiest thing to do is to upload the file to your server and put a link to it on your website. But this is not very user-friendly for whoever is going to download and install your application. In some cases, when your server isn’t configured to handle AIR files, it may even fail altogether. That’s why we created the concept of install badges. Install badges are basically a small Flash application that handles download and install in such a way that it becomes very easy for the end user to install your application.

There are 3 different flavors of the install badge: The standard version, the “currently in beta” version and the custom install badge.

The standard install badge is part of the AIR SDK. If you download and extract that zip file, there’s a folder called samples that includes a ready-to-go sample. Just change some parameters in the source of the html, upload the files and your AIR file to your server and you’re done. I have to be honest and tell you that I don’t really like the standard badge. It’s fine if you just want a simple install badge but the beta badge is so much better.

The beta badge is available on Adobe Labs. It is actually created by Grant Skinner. The first thing you notice when you launch the sample, is that it has a much cooler/smooth look. But this badge also has a bunch of extra features that the default badge doesn’t have. For one, this badge can determine if the application is already installed and then prompt the user to launch the application right from within the browser. It also detects if the user has the correct version of the runtime installed; if not, it will offer to download it. This badge also allows you to add a little bit of support information when the user clicks on the question-mark icon. But my favorite feature is that this badge uses SWFObject which is my preferred way of adding SWF content to a web page. If you compare the source of the default and beta badge, you’ll see that SWFObject and the way it handles FlashVars is a lot more readable compared to the name-value pairs in the default badge.

The third option would be to build your own install badge. Don’t worry… you don’t have to start from scratch. The sources for both the default and beta badge are available so you can use these as the basis for your own. It’s as simple as that ;-) The great thing is that this can be anything you want to it to be and can have all the features you want it to have ’cause well… you are building it. If you want to ping your server whenever someone starts the install of your application for instance, that is absolutely possible.

First of all, why is signing an application important? Easy. When your application is unsigned or signed with a self-signed certificate, the user will get two red icons on the install screen. The first one is related to your code signing certificate. It’s telling you that the “publisher is unknown” which is very normal since we have no idea who actually signed this application.

When you do get a code signing certificate and sign the application with it, the icon will turn green or in some cases yellow. The yellow icon will appear when you are using the file I/O API.

So where do you get a code signing certificate? Well, maybe you already have one. If you already bought one to sign Java or Cocoa applications for instance, chances are that this certificate is 100% compatible and you can use that. To make sure, check that your certificate is a Class 3 code signing certificate and you should be ready to go. If you don’t have, there’s a number of companies like Thawte.com that actually sell these. But if you upload your application to the Adobe AIR marketplace, you may get a complimentary code signing certificate from us. More info here.

I’m mainly using Flex for AIR development but the workflow is very similar in Flash or Dreamweaver. In case of Flex, you are actually going to build a release version of your application. To do that, you click the “export release build”-button. That will popup a little wizard window. In the first window, you can specify where you want to save your .AIR file. In this case, I’m saving it on the desktop.

When you click “next”, Flex will ask you to specify which digital certificate you want to use. If you don’t have one but still want to build a .AIR file for testing, click on the “create” button. When you fill out all the details of that form, you can save that self signed certificate so you don’t have to fill out that form every time. I saved mine in my home folder. Once you have created it, you can easily reuse it by just entering your password.

If you already have a code signing certificate, you can browse to the location you saved it to use it. Click “finish” and your AIR file is going to be baked. That’s it.