> well, it slots nicely into an N-tiered environment. While I used to > get away with small VB5 apps having the UI talking directly to the > database (using DAO - shudder), it wasn't really very flexible.
See the thing is, I'm trying to use AIR not to build RIAs, but rather cross-platform desktop apps with spiffy interfaces. I don't have the luxury here of client/server architecture and the ability to use something else for the backend (the .NET/Java proxy aside, which doesn't have a very good deployment story). There isn't much else out there with the ease and features of AIR for desktop apps, which is annoying. As an RIA platform, which is what they're focusing on, it's great. But it's got so many attributes that would make it a good desktop app platform too, and is so close, yet so far from being about to do that too. But hey, desktop apps are dying slowly right? :) > Mono was mentioned before as a way of getting around having > non-windows clients: maybe I'm far too conservitative or afraid, but I > find it really hard to embrace Mono. True, but you have that problem even with platforms where the apps are supposed to be cross-OS compatible due to inherent differences between OSs, e.g. Java. Granted the likelihood might be less, and it all depends on the features you leverage, but then I'd expect simple apps to work fine between .NET and Mono also. It isn't an ideal situation, but it's probably the best solution possible realistically - the chance of seeing a Microsoft supported release of .NET on Linux is minuscule :) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- List address: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] List FAQ: http://www.codify.com/lists/ozsilverlight Other lists you might want to join: http://www.codify.com/lists
