Adobe Air and Flash Future on Desktop and Mobile Devices

Question

Hello,
iam interested to develop for mobil and desktop devices with AS3 and Flash Professional and i have any question.
I see also many benefits to develop in flash as in java because javas gui development is based on swing a old java graphics engine.
Next reason is the plattform like Linux,Windows,IOS.,the Game Development and other stuff.
With Flash i can create nextgen interactive stunning cool gui interfaces for apps.
I dont know why flash sucks for the market and devices.
My question: is as3 and flash save for the future ?
Make it really sense to learn as3 and Flash ?
I have read many blogs,threads on adobe and other forums year 2012 Adobe stop flash development,
and now 2013 google androids kitkat now have removed api features that kills complete flash !!!
Other comments says Flash is dead for the market!? Many frustradet flash developers he work 10 years and more with flash are crying.
So what is really the Future for the A3 and Flash Development ?
Thanks and greetings

Answer 1

Hi mc_gfx,
> You think i can get started with flash and air development without worries?
Software development always involves risk, so you can't really do much without worries.       AIR in particular is a cutting (bleading?) edge technology. Adobe is attempting to solve a difficult problem with limited resources, and the results aren't always ideal.
If you want to deploy to Android and iOS, and you write two native apps, you face a 100% risk that you'll have to write your app twice. While this may not take twice as long as writing it once, it will come close.
If you use AIR, you only have to write your app once, but you face other risks.
Here's the problem. In AIR, Adobe is attempting to create a framework that translates ActionScript into bytecode for two different platforms. This isn't easy. Every time Apple or Google upgrades their operating system Adobe has to try to refine AIR so that it translates everything correctly for the new OS. AIR also has to maintain backward compatability with all previous OSs (is that the plural of OS?). AIR also has to work with many different models of Android and iOS devices. This includes supporting most, though not all, of the many different capabilities that these OSs support. Adobe, wisely, doesn't try to support every new feature immediately. Instead, it picks and chooses which new features it will support, and how soon. But even taking this approach I have the impression that their task is daunting.
If you research this forum you'll find numerous examples of people complaining about features that don't quite work correctly. For example, I've put ~6 developer months into developing a language learning app, only to find that AIR's MP3 playback support has some limitations which severely impact the playback of voice recordings, which severely degrades the value of my app. I'm hoping that Adobe will fix this bug, but it's been two months now, with no movement. Another serious bug, involving audio recording using the device microphone, took three months to get fixed. During that period I had no idea whether it would get fixed, or whether I'd have to disable an important feature of my app on iOS.
So, you want "without worries"?  
Some people are lobbying Adobe to include support for Windows Phone in the AIR framework. IMHO, this is madness. Adobe clearly has limited resources. Let them first focus on making basic features like MP3 playback work properly on the platforms that they already support.
The same issues probably apply to all the other cross-platform development frameworks - Sencha, Xamarin, etc. They face the same difficult technical challenges. I can't speak to the question of how well they're addressing them, but I'd want research them carefully before I invested a lot of time into developing with them.
With regards to AIR, here's my advice: Before you start a non-trivial project using AIR, make a list of all the things that your app will do, then see if you can find existing apps created with AIR that do these things. Make sure that the feature works on both Android and iOS. You won't be able to test on every device that you'd like to support, but pick a few and test on them.
You don't need to worry about your app's logic - ActionScript is great for that - and AIR translates it just fine. But think carefully about your app's 'skin' - all the ways that you want it to interact with the outside world - input and output - and confirm that apps exist that demonstrate that AIR can handle these features. Also think about the app's infrastructure - network interactions - database interactions - etc.
You'll probably end up with a list of features that you haven't been able to confirm. You can vet these by creating a proof of concept that confirms that AIR will support these needs. Do this before you start developing the full app. Once that's done, pray that everything that works now will continue to work with future OSs and devices. Adobe has a pretty good record on this sort of things, but there aren't any guarantees.
Don't worry, be happy        ?
HTH,
Douglas