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Taking in a Breath of (Adobe) AIR

by Gloria McConnell, Rough Draft Managing Editor and Tool Snoop

Have you heard about Adobe® AIR™? If you attended the January chapter meeting, you heard Neil Perlin mention it. Neil’s explanation of Adobe AIR was not wrong, but it was very focused on technical communicators’ most likely interest in this new Adobe endeavor, the Adobe AIR RoboHelp® Packager.

The more complete answer to “What is Adobe AIR?” is as follows (quoted from the Adobe AIR FAQs):

Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system runtime that lets developers combine HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash®, and Flex technologies to deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop. Adobe AIR allows developers to use familiar tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver® CS4, Flex® Builder™ 3, Flash CS4 Professional, or any text editor to build their applications and easily deliver a single application installer that works across operating systems.

For me, the key take-aways are “deploy rich Internet applications on the desktop” and “easily deliver a single application installer.” If you are interested in the application-specific details about Adobe AIR, see the FAQs and review the Browser vs. Desktop matrix, which compares how Web applications work in a typical browser and in Adobe AIR.

Who is creating Adobe AIR applications? Some big names; ebay might be one of the biggest. If interested, see the Adobe AIR showcase applications.

Note that neither Adobe AIR nor the RoboHelp Packager are new; I found discussions of Adobe AIR as early as 2006. Last year, the RoboHelp Packager was released as a separate tool for RoboHelp 7. Now-available RoboHelp 8 includes the AIR Packager as an integrated component. This article addresses the Packager as used with RoboHelp 7.

RoboHelp Packager

Now, back to the feature that grabs the attention of most technical communicators—the Adobe AIR RoboHelp Packager. This tool allows Web Help developers to convert Web Help files (created with RoboHelp 7) to .air files. This means that instead of deploying beaucoup HTML and other files as the Help for a Web application, you can deploy a single .air file. Whereas the Web application and your Web Help files reside on a Web server, the Adobe AIR application and your .air Help file reside on the desktop. This is not just any desktop-resident Help file, however. Click the following figure for an overview of some of the features.

Features

For an Adobe view, see RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR is Live Now! in the Adobe’s Technical Communication blog. Some of the advantages that I discovered include:

1. The AIR Help “wrapper” provides several great features for users. It is very easy to understand and use. I particularly like:

a.   The dynamic mini-TOC for the topic in view.

b.   The ease of adding and organizing Favorites.

c.    The simplicity of adding and viewing comments – whether to share
or to use as bookmarks.

d.   The tabbed viewing for topics, which allows multiple topics to be open at the same time.

2. From a developer’s perspective, the packager is simple to use. The basic procedure is to create your Web Help in RoboHelp, then start the packager, point to your Web Help folder, make a few settings, then generate the .air file. That’s it.
3. You can choose from different templates and select various skins or themes to produce a custom look.
4. If the products you are documenting run on different platforms, you will need only one AIR Help file, not one for each platform. This includes Windows, Macintosh, and Linux.
5. From a product installation perspective, the single .air file is much easier to deal with than a folder with hundreds – perhaps thousands – of files for a Web Help project.
6. Updates can be pushed to the user, as long as they have an Internet connection.
7. The installer package for your .air file can be digitally signed.

Try the packager yourself

The RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR is available from Adobe at http://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp/robohelp-packager-for-air/.

To install and use this tool, you will need:

»    RoboHelp 7 (your own license), or RoboHelp 8 (in which case the packager is included with RoboHelp)

»    Adobe AIR runtime (http://get.adobe.com/air/)

»    Java™ Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.6 or later (http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp)

»    System requirements as described on http://www.adobe.com/products/air/systemreqs/

More information

For more information, the most comprehensive write-up I’ve found is from Adobe Community Expert Peter Grainge: The RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR. (Thank you, Peter!) Note that the article is a bit old, as the product is no longer in beta production, and is integrated in RoboHelp 8.

I was able to track down a short user guide for the Packager, but honestly, you don’t need it. Peter Grainge’s article provides all you need to know and more. If you want that guide, however, contact me at newsletter@stc-phoenix.com.

If you are interested in in RoboHelp 8, see http://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp/features/.

So, RoboHelp users, take a deep breath and try something new.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 7:00 am and is filed under January/February 2009 Issue, Rough Draft Newsletter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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