![]() ![]() AIR is in beta so there’s time to fix problems. ![]() I wish other software vendors were equally responsive. I’ll add that I’m most impressed with Paul Robertson’s willingness to enter into this dialog. Add compulsory application signing and it would look better still. If the default were no file I/O, or file I/O isolated to the source domain of the AIR application, that would help considerably. The appearance of the words “System Access: UNRESTRICTED” in the above dialog suggests that Adobe has or is planning a richer security model. While that’s good in one way, it’s arguably the worst of both worlds: not secure (because of full file system access), and not extensible either. That’s not the case with the beta:Ī further point is that despite the scary dialog, AIR apps are actually tightly locked down from a developer perspective, with no access to native code such as the operating system API, scripts, or native dynamic libraries. The risks will be mitigated if Adobe restricts AIR to signed applications. If users become complacent about passing the AIR install dialog, then all the bad guy needs to do is to create a whizzy game that does a background search of your computer looking for online banking passwords. What if a lot of these games turn into AIR apps? Suddenly, instead of online Flash games being relatively safe, they become relatively risky. Some of these games would be a natural fit for AIR: play the game from a desktop shortcut, option to save your game locally, no browser baggage. I’ve seen how much kids love playing Flash games on the Web. The seamless install feature also lets users install the AIR application without downloading the AIR file to their machine. If the AIR runtime is not installed, the user is given the option to install it. The seamless install feature lets you provide a link in a web page that lets the user install an AIR application by simply clicking the link. Here’s the description in the docs for seamless install: A possible concern though is that Adobe wants to make installing AIR applications really easy. The security risks of desktop apps are well-known, and that’s why users have learned to be cautious about installing them. Since any C++ application could theoretically include the SQLite library, installing an AIR application is no different from installing any C++ application in the sense that, by doing so, a user opens himself up to possible abuses and security risks. In this way, an AIR application is comparable to any other desktop application, such as one written in C++. In order for a user to access an AIR application, he or she must first choose to install the application, including going through a security dialog that will describe whether the application was signed with a security certificate. This includes local SQLite databases as well as other documents. The point I made is that any AIR application has the same access to the file system as the user. And at that point maybe we will finally know whether penguins can fly when given AIR.Adobe’s Paul Robertson has a thoughtful response to my complaint about AIR security. Unfortunately at this point not everyone will be accepted into this pre-beta program however there will be public betas when the pre-beta has been sufficiently tested. What is your name, company name and email address? What other operating system are you using, if any (Mac, Windows)? Can you compare the behavior of AIR for Linux with AIR for Windows and AIR for Mac OS?Īre you working on an AIR application today? If so, please describe.Īre you primarily a Flash, Flex or JavaScript developer? Will you be developing applications on your Linux machine (as opposed to writing on Windows and testing the applications on Linux)? What is the primary distribution of Linux that you’re using? If you are using more than one distribution, please list. How many hours a week can you spend testing on Linux? Will you be able to submit bug reports on issues that you find back to our development team? If you are interested please answer the questions below in an email to helptesterairlinux at adobe dot com.Īre you comfortable working with prerelease software that is not yet feature complete? The Adobe AIR team is now in the phase of development where they need a handful of additional testers to begin testing initial builds of AIR on Linux. This is great news for developers like me who use Linux as their primary desktop operating system. As of today there have only been releases of Adobe AIR for Windows and Mac but Adobe is committed to also delivering a version for Linux. Developers using Flex, Flash, HTML, JavaScript, and Ajax can easily build applications for the desktop using Adobe AIR. Adobe AIR is a cross-operating system runtime for deliverying rich Internet applications on the desktop. ![]()
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