Adobe AIR is a extraordinary platform and the core idea behind AIR i.e enabling web developers to build desktop apps has been revolutionary. But, there are things about AIR that are very limiting as a developer … many real world applications need much more interaction with the desktop than AIR allows, yes Adobe has valid security related reasons not to allow this but once users allow you to install an application on their desktop they expect features that AIR doesn’t allow you to implement … not being able to do trivial things like .. launch a file in its default application or register a global keyboard shortcut is sometimes frustrating and has led to developers putting together things like The Merapi Project .. which quite frankly is a hack to work around the core problem .. inextensibility of AIR as a platform.
Mrinal Wadhwa is a software developer form Bangalore, India. His interests include Rich Internet Applications and Enterprise Software. These days he's working with a small team trying to bootstrap a software as a service product startup
