Advanced Internet Applications on Desktop

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  !"#$%&'()+,-./012345

The url element must be pointing to application binary file to be downloaded. Purpose of other elements is fairly self explanatory. Each time we create an update, we will update this file as well and auto update framework will take care of the rest for us. Implementation of this example application showed that there are many features that can be handled very easily. However, there are also complications that are not obvious at the first sight. One of the biggest problems was poor support of XMPP in Flash, only usable library is XIFF and even this library does not fully support core XMPP functionality[40], thus some changes were needed to achieve desired functionality. In this case modification of the internal structure of library and replacement of class that represents XMPP user in ActionScript. Except that carious minor issues appeared, for example in connection with peerto-peer and XMPP integration, but these were solved, either by help of online resources, or by redesigning faulty code. 5.2.2

Deployment

Final application can be distributed in two ways. Either via download web page with install badge, which can resolve problems, if AIR is not installed, or via distribution of AIR installer file. The second option requires AIR to be installed otherwise installation will not be possible. Installation process itself is very easy and does not usually require any further adjustments made by the user. If applications are distributed in form of a native installer, installation process resembles native installation process of respective platform. Worth noting is fact that only a single instance of an application can run on host computer at a time, it is not possible to run two instances of one application by default. This is a drawback of security model, which Adobe AIR uses. However, if applications have different application identifiers they are able to run simultaneously. This is the case of test application that is included in data appendix, it uses different application identifier thus two same applications can be installed and run on one host operating system. 57

5.2. DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT Deployment diagram of working solution can be seen in Figure 5.3. If we would like to deploy the whole system ourselves, except installation of client application, it is required to have XMPP and RTMFP servers deployed, or otherwise available and properly reconfigured application releases.

Figure 5.3: AIR runtime architecture

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Chapter 6

Conclusion This work described and compared selected important rich Internet application platforms, namely Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight. The comparison was aimed at offered technology features, portability, development support and usability of applications created on top of these platforms. As compared features posed various requirements that needed to be assessed, a complex comparison and benchmark method was needed. Unluckily rich Internet applications deployed on desktop present young area and there are no methods that would cover comparison and evaluation of required features. As a result comparison and benchmarking method, covering these areas, was proposed. This method is based on common requirements of users and developers. Method covers before mentioned features of compared platforms, with respect to specific roles that users and developers can have. According to proposed method, comparison and benchmark was divided into two parts, comparison of offered features and refinement of these results based on user specific requirements. Obtained results show that Adobe AIR platform presents a better solution for desktop deployment, if any role is considered. AIR applications are in general more usable and offer better integration and customization options. Silverlight’s worse overall score is caused by its core design and designation. Microsoft prefers .NET platform to Silverlight as a in case of desktop application development and thus Silverlight’s out-of-browser support is rather limited. However, we must not forget the comparison will always introduce an aspect of subjective judgement, and thus these results must be considered as an approximate evaluation. Proposed method in fact serves as a framework for complex comparisons. It describes areas and roles that need to be covered, but not exact list of features that must be assessed. Users can adjust this method according to their needs and based on them obtain results that will be specific to their use case. The secondary aim of work was practical demonstration of capabilities of rich Internet application built in Adobe Flex and deployed on Adobe AIR runtime. The video chat application demonstrates capabilities such as offline storage, multimedia device access and streaming. The Adobe AIR provides a powerful platform for rich Internet application development. Applications can be developed by combination of HTML and JavaScript, as well as use of Flash or Flex. AIR applications developed with use of JavaScript and HTML do not offer as many capabilities, as their Flash or Flex rivals. HTML-based AIR applications cannot handle multimedia content by themselves, as well as they cannot access devices like microphone 59

6. C ONCLUSION or web camera and streaming is not supported either. Flex based application, provide rich multimedia capabilities, like video or music playback, provide predefined visual building blocks and built in streaming support. Generally Flex applications have better multimedia capabilities and provide more advanced functionality. Nevertheless, when we compare AIR applications to traditional desktop applications based on .NET or Java, we must say they provide usually less capabilities, and in some special cases worse performance. Despite these disadvantages, rich Internet applications provide following advantages: easy to learn framework, very good support of visual customization and shorter development process.

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Appendix A

Content of attached CD Attached CD contains configured Flex Builder project folder with all assets and source code required to successfully build the final release of video chat client application. Except that it contains binary release files of main and tester application, as well as README file containing additional information on applications. The project file structure is following: •

bin-release folder contains binary releases of installers

•

bin-debug folder contains debug binary files that can be used for debugging purposes

•

libs folder contains additional required libraries

•

src folder contains full source code and assets required for release builds

•

.settings, .project folders and additional dot-prefixed files contain Flex project settings

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