Will Air publish to Html5?

[fftidus]

Apple has banned the html5 technology of APP,so other h5 engines can't publish app for Apple store next year!
If air can publish html5,it can be the true cross-platform engine.

[neuronix]

Please read the FAQ: https://airsdk.harman.com/faq

To keep the issues list clean, please close your issue and next time check https://forum.starling-framework.org/ first where you will generally find quick & good answers :)

[rewb0rn]

As the year closes, it would be a great time to get an update on this or an update on the future of the Air roadmap in general. Html5 target would definitely be on our wishlist, apart from keeping the current platform targets alive and well (Harman is already doing a great job with this).

Meanwhile, porting our codebase from AS3 to Haxe has proven to be a good choice to both provide swf / Air targets as well as HTML5.

[ajwfrost]

Briefly..

Support for the other platforms is coming! slower than I had hoped, we've hit a few snags but are getting through them with support from Adobe. And we're looking forward to some of the changes we can then bring to the platform to address some of the bugs and add a few tweaks and new features in the APIs.

In terms of HTML based support, we have an interesting discussion going on with a third party that might be able to help enable this. We should know more around March/April time.

thanks

[ajwfrost]

Slowly .. we've had a few more discussions, had a bit of a play with a few ideas, and have some more conversations already lined up. The WebAssembly world has moved on a bit which has helped, so we may be able to work on some basic support for specific types of content i.e. focusing on Stage3D, and maybe some 'gpu' mode rendering using WebGL. Still fairly early stages but it's becoming more likely I think.

[raresn]

@ajwfrost can you imagine being able to export to browser again? Holy cow. this would be HUGE.

[marchbold]

@raresn It would be massive boost to the platform :)

[Ender22]

I'd do a backflip in happiness, and that's not even physically possible, but I'd do it!

[Fancy2209]

While this isn't ready, ruffle works really well nowdays, mind you though it doesn't support AIR specific functionality as it's a FP Reimplantation, not AIR

[tuarua]

Support for the other platforms is coming!

@ajwfrost Is there an ETA on AIR being updated so that it is compiled against iOS SDK 13 ?
I have hit a blocker because it is still 12 and despite setting platformsdk I am getting linking issues against a Swift static library.

[matrix3d]

?2022

[ajwfrost]

From a technical perspective, things have moved forwards a bit, but there are some other hurdles that we will need to work through. It's still on our minds and we're trying to work out a practical way that we can provide this....

[Shaunmax]

Here is a tutorial on how to convert your Flash/AIR project to Haxe : -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTJqxXVB6rU&t=340s

[Elintondm]

Excellent tutorial! Too bad it only works for those who use starling. Anyone knows how to migrate to html5 from a project without starling?

[Shaunmax]

Just ignore the starling part, the remaining should be same!

[Matvii-Jarosh]

How are things going in 2024? I dream of seeing Adobe Air in the browser

[Fancy2209]

i.e. AOT on Android, and support for Nintendo Switch

@ajwfrost Is there much of a demand for Switch support ? It wouldn't hurt but I tend to think web would be much more of a priority for most developers.

In my opinion, web support is probably the only feature that could keep AIR alive long term.

I doubt many developers will continue investing into the AIR platform instead of using other more popular solutions like Unity, Defold, Godot for games... or React, Expo etc. for apps... when Flash & AIR's biggest historical advantage over the competition - true crossplatform support (web, desktop & mobile) - is gone.

I feel like Switch and Consoles is a great idea, I'm gonna be honest, I've tried other engines and Flash just feels nicer for me for some reason
Also Switch allows devs to put their old AS3 games on consoles

[ajwfrost]

@neuronix I agree with you re the longer term need for this, absolutely. There have been (and still are) some political considerations though..

My understanding is that games on consoles have much better revenue figures so for some of the premium games that use AIR, it would be quite compelling to be able to run these on a console. For the "old AS3 games" thing - whilst individuals who have small/basic games are unlikely to get very far (I suspect) in persuading Nintendo to accept these, it's more likely that an aggregator would be able to set up this sort of thing..

[raresn]

To be honest, I thought the same about starting with the browser first. However, from a financial perspective, it makes sense. Still, I'll definitely be popping open a bottle of champagne when AIR is back in the browser!

Thank you for the insight, @ajwfrost. If you have any updates on the developments, please know that we eagerly consume every bit of information you share with us.

Although it's not the main topic of this thread, do you have any news on the TypeScript idea instead of AS3? Are there any roadmaps or plans for AIR in general that you can share?

Thanks a lot!

[shaucky]

Maybe starting a new thread for news about platform/language support is better? Or community can only pick up information by irregular asking?

Currently we know Harman is working on compile to WebAssembly, Nintendo Switch, but actually i think everything is going too slowly… This thread is almost five years now.

Now we can build wonderful apps/games on traditional platforms, but since AIR released on 2008, number of platform supported had no change. From my perspective, the most intuitive comparison is the difference between the platforms supported by AIR and Unity.

I just want to say that support for new platforms is always anticipated, but when will we see the products? (not mean to blame, but worry)

[GeneralVimes]

Here is a python script what I wrote for myself: https://github.com/GeneralVimes/AS32JS/
It converts my games well (AIR Starling to HTML5 Phaser)