Looks like the AIR 3 release candidate is available now over at the adobe labs site. I am pretty excited to try this out for one main new feature, captive runtime. It has been a big turn off for many consumers when they have just installed an app only to have the first thing that shows up when they launch it is a prompt that they need to install AIR. Now we can just include the runtime and avoid the separate install which will be seamless to the consumer but will come at the cost of an 8mb increased file size of applications that are created using this feature.

Some other features in this release that I am interested in for mobile development are,

• Stage Video Hardware Acceleration – Can now use hardware acceleration for video playback to reduce processor and memory usage. Should also provide smoother video playback.
• Encrypted Local Storage – Safely store sensitive data on the user’s device. Since phones are easily lost or stolen it is good to have this level of protection for the user of the application.
• Native Extensions for AIR – Create/Use ActionScript libraries with native code to use platform and device specific native capabilities and APIs. This will be great for not having to create components to mimic native features of the device.

Article Links,

• Article Source : http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplatformruntimes/air3/
• AIR 3 RC Download Page: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/air3.html
• AIR3 Release Notes - http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/916/cpsid_91694.html

Welcome everyone to my little piece of the internet. I decided to set up this blog as a way to document and discuss code for a better learning experience for myself and anyone else who might find it useful. Most code that I do post on this site will also be made available at gitHub which you can view at https://github.com/CenturyMan1979. If you every notice an error in the code I post or just have some insight on how to improve on it I would love to hear your input.