Ben Forta

I am in Shanghai, staying overnight here and then flying back to the US tomorrow morning. I am in the Yuyuan (Yu Garden) area, and the skyline view is absolutely breathtaking.
This morning (in Hangzhou) I demonstrated building AIR applications using just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And afterwards I heard from several audience members who were amazed at how simple the process is. They asked me to go through the steps again, and so I am posting a few notes here:

• First and foremost, you’ll want the Adobe AIR Extensions For Dreamweaver installed.
• Create a site in Dreamweaver, a simple site with no server-side support will suffice.
• Create an HTML page in Dreamweaver. You may want to select one of the Starter Pages from the Dreamweaver start screen, (Starter Page (Theme) has some nice examples).
• Save the page.
• To preview the page as an AIR app, right-click on the file name in the Dreamweaver File panel, and select Preview in Adobe AIR.
• To package up the application as an AIR file ready for distribution and installation, right-click on the file-name and select Package as Adobe AIR Application. You’ll be prompted for the application name, version information, the root content file (which file to load when the application starts up), application window details, as well as for any other files to include. (The settings provided here are saved in the generated application.xml file). Click the package button, and you’ll have an AIR application. It’s as simple as that.

You’ll find lots of information and useful links on the Develop on Adobe AIR with HTML and JavaScript page. And also check out Kevin Hoyt’s blog for lots of notes, tips, and examples.