"I'm not crazy about AIR. It's not the first, or one-hundred and
first, application layer software to make it possible to run the
same application on multiple platforms. Java, JavaScript, etc. etc.
have all had their day in the sun and more recently
Silverlight/Moonlight, JavaFX, and Appcelerator Titanium have
thrown their hats in the ring. That said. AIR applications are
remarkably fast and reasonably mature.
"We're already seeing a fair number of non-trivial, useful AIR
programs like the Google Analytics Reporting Suite, the twhrl
social network client, and RichFLV, a Flash video editor. And, now,
in addition to Windows and Mac OS, you can run AIR and its
applications on Linux as well.
"That's the good news. The bad news is that getting AIR to
install on your Linux desktop can be troublesome and, once in
place, installing AIR applications is a bit of a security
worry."
