Adobe Air and Rails

[cipher_neo]

Is it possible to wrap a HTML5 jquery app that is served up by a rails app in an adobe air app that is installable on multiple platforms?

I don't know much about adobe air, but the effect I am trying to achieve is to bring the web app to the desktop via an installable exe with not a lot of work.

[Robert Walker]

Lee Farrell wrote in post #1059057:

That sounds complicated to me. I also don't know much about Adobe AIR,
other than it's based on Flash and ActionScript so I wouldn't expect it
to be directly compatible with HTML5 and JavaScript.

I'd say your best bet would be to do something like what Thoughtworks
did with their Mingle product, which wraps a Rails app in JRuby.

http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/mingle-agile-project-management

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

[paul h]

On Tuesday, May 1, 2012 12:56:56 PM UTC+1, cipher_neo wrote:

Is it possible to wrap a HTML5 jquery app that is served up by a rails app in an adobe air app that is installable on multiple platforms?

I don't know much about adobe air, but the effect I am trying to achieve is to bring the web app to the desktop via an installable exe with not a lot of work.

So I guess this is for Windows as you mention an exe?

I don't know much about Adobe Air, other than the few apps I have tried have required runtimes to be downloaded directly from Adobe. One problem with Air, AFAIK, is that you can't distribute it yourself, so your users are taken out of your app to get the Air files required to run your app, so you distribute the application files, but the runtimes from Adobe are required to run your app first - this may have changed from what I remember, it was many years ago. This may not be the image you wish to portray to your users.

One possible solution, would be to have a look at SWF Studio, from Northcode [1]. You will need to know some Flash or Flex, but you can use SWF Studio to embed a browser, and any required files that can be packaged into the exe, and then extracted at your convenience. Taking it a step or two further, you might also be able to embed your complete rails app, which may not be what you want anyway, but could be an option.

The guys at Northcode are old school programmers and extremely helpful. You can download an unlimited free trial which will build your exe with a 24hr expiration period, so you can build and test an unlimited number of times before you decide to purchase.

BW

Paul

[1] www.northcode.com

 

[paul h]

On Wednesday, May 2, 2012 12:16:57 PM UTC+1, paul h wrote:

On Tuesday, May 1, 2012 12:56:56 PM UTC+1, cipher_neo wrote:

Is it possible to wrap a HTML5 jquery app that is served up by a rails app in an adobe air app that is installable on multiple platforms?

I don't know much about adobe air, but the effect I am trying to achieve is to bring the web app to the desktop via an installable exe with not a lot of work.

So I guess this is for Windows as you mention an exe?

I should read better, just checked back and spotted you asking for multiple platforms - SWF Studio is Windows only by default although the guys at Northcode do have a MAC solution in the background (called Thing), and they will do work for clients so may be able to provide something for Linux if you ask...... 

[cipher_neo]

Thanks for the help guys. 

The webkit build that bundles with AIR doesn't support Web Sockets or the localStorage which we depend on, so it looks to be a dead end. 

I had a look at the solutions mentioned above.

I am looking into using webkit.net to build a custom version of webkit that will simply wrap the html5 app.

Anyone have any experience with this?