(X)HTML vs Adobe Air vs ?

Question

Hi,
In my small office I'm using a self designed, simple file (as in dossiers, not docs) management app that I'm still working on, providing new functionalities as we go. Currently, I use plain XHTML, CSS, PostgreSQL, LDAP and calDAV.
To be able to use my screen real estate better, I was planning to update the CSS of this website, so I started looking and came across CSS3 and HTML5, so I'm really considering to jump to these new technologies in order to be able to add more complex capabilities later.
... And then I stumbled across Adobe AIR. If I'm redesigning what I've got, it might be a good idea to use this or another webapp-framework that is compatible through all major OS's (which was my first major reason to use XHTML).
Can anybody give me a solid reason to use a webapp-framework like that? At the moment XHTML fills all my needs, but I'm in no way a programmer (PHP is the best I can, and writing it takes a whole lot of time). Is there a downside to (X)HTML I'm not aware of or is Adobe AIR providing major upsides?
THX!
Zl.

Answer 1

tavianator wrote:
xenobrain wrote:I haven't used Air, but I know it can do some things a regular web page can't do, like have filesystem access and use an embedded sqlite database.
Actually, HTML5 has local storage.  You can't do SQL queries against it, but it should be enough for most uses.  And what use is there for FS access other than file uploads?
Local storage is only supported in Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, IE8+, Chrome 4+, which aside from IE8, those versions do not have widespread corporate deployment yet.  Also you don't need FS access for uploads, it's for writing to and editing existing files on the OS, like a regular desktop app.
tavianator wrote:
It also has an embedded rendering engine (webkit) which means you don't have to make your app compatible with multiple browsers.
Wait, so relying on a proprietary 3rd party plugin makes your web site more portable than one using standard (X)HTML?
Yes.  It may well be easier (and "safer" in the sysadmin's eyes) to deploy an Air application than to update everyone's web browsers.  Plus if there are multiple browsers deployed within the company, you don't have to test your app against them.
tavianator wrote:
I believe it also has a lot of premade widgets available, whereas html forms have an extremely limited set.
HTML5 extends HTML forms by a lot, and jQuery and plenty of other toolkits have more featureful widgets.
True, dat.  JQuery rocks.  I've also been playing with SproutCore as a complete GUI toolkit.
Last edited by xenobrain (2010-06-13 13:14:01)