Adobe AIR for Android has just been announced, and it looks like users will have a lot of new apps and features to look forward to. Android devs can now use ActionScript 3, or AS3, to create apps that run as native Android apps. Naturally, all of these apps can be made available to the Android Market where most folks grab their apps.
Adobe says:
Developers can write new code or reuse existing web content to build AIR applications for the Android OS. Because the source code and assets are reusable across the Flash Platform runtimes, Adobe AIR and Flash Player, it also gives developers a way to more easily target other mobile and desktop environments.
This makes getting apps on different interfaces with the same code super easy and convenient for devs. As a matter of fact, Adobe quoted a developer as a sort of testimonial on its site:
“It took about four days for us to make the AIR Android version, and 1/2 of those days were spent getting up to speed with the Android tools.
“Code reuse? You bet. Both the desktop and mobile clients use the same interfaces and api calls to interact with server-side infrastructure (which includes our web services platform and our FMS 3.5 servers).
“Two different clients and one server interface; we love AIR!”
– Bruce Hopkins, chief architect for BlogRadio
Alrighty then. If Mr. Hopkins’ enthusiasm about AIR really makes it that enticing, plenty of AS3 and Flash developers might have an even bigger reason to develop for Android.
On behalf of all Android fanboys out there, let me say, “Suck it, Apple.”
If you’re a dev and interested in the pre-release beta program, you can sign up right here.
[Via: Adobe]