Adobe® Flex^TM is a collection of technologies from Adobe Systems for the development and deployment of cross platform, Rich Internet Applications (RIA) based on the proprietary Adobe Flash platform.

Application servers maintain state by using cookies and session variables to keep track of users, but all the logic is on the server. So while a user is looking at a page in their browser, the application is unable to do anything until the user commits an action that sends data from the page back to the server for processing. The code processes the data, and generates resulting HTML that the browser loads back in.

Unlike page-based HTML applications, Flex applications mean significant changes to the view don't require loading a new page. Flex and Flash Player provide many useful ways to send and load data to and from server-side components without requiring a reload of the view. In a multi-tiered model, Flex applications serve as the presentation tier.

Flex enables the creation of expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems and saves hits to your web server, application server, database, and network. For one user this may not be a big deal, but what about 1,000 users, or 10,000 users?

So now you can have web applications that aren't limited to the heavy restrictions of HTML. Applications developed in Flash can offer a much more robust experience for the user where productivity is bolstered by ease of use, streamlined workflow, and real time interactivity that is impossible to accomplish in HTML itself.

Developing Rich Internet Applications with Adobe AIR

Adobe® AIR^TM is a cross-operating system runtime that allows to build and deploy RIAs to the desktop.

AIR enables users to work in familiar environments, to leverage the tools and approaches you find most comfortable, and by supporting Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Ajax, PDF can be leveraged with any application

Users interact with AIR applications in the same way that they interact with native desktop applications. The runtime is installed once on the user's computer, and then AIR applications are installed and run just like any other desktop application.

Since AIR is an application runtime, it has little or no visible user interface and there is complete control over the application and the experience it provides to users. The runtime provides a consistent cross-operating system platform and framework for deploying applications and therefore eliminates cross-browser testing by ensuring consistent functionality and interactions across desktops. Applications developed for AIR run across multiple operating systems without any additional work.

AIR dramatically changes how applications can be created, deployed, and experienced. You gain more creative control and can extend your Flash, Flex, HTML, and Ajax-based applications to the desktop, without using traditional desktop development technologies.

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