Google Chrome allows you to create desktop applications from a Web page? In fact, as indicated in the menu item, it is simply allowed to create a shortcut to a shortcut that - in turn - opens a window without the address bar and without all the "frills" of the browser. This does not mean that we have created a desktop application, we only created a link to the same Google Chrome mode - so to speak-chrome-less.
Feature simle, but more ambitious, had already been proposed by the Mozilla Foundation in 2007, through the project Prism . This is definitely the most versatile and articulate, also accompanied by a useful extension that allows you to create desktop applications menu of FireFox, like Google Chrome .
However, both solutions are far from the technology Adobe AIR . Before anyone mistake them it is worth noting the differences between a desktop shortcut that opens a window with a menu and a desktop application real hard.
Adobe AIR , in fact, unlike the solutions offered by Google Chrome and Prism allows you to:
- Virtually complete access to the system running the application, with the ability to read and write files. Possibility to extend its functionality through DLLs (dynamic link library), extensions, and third-party products such as SHU Player (see Deploying Adobe AIR applications: by AIR Badges Player to SHU )
- Manages the application as the other system applications: Install and Uninstall
Right clarification.
Personally I see a good future for AIR, although many now consider it as yet another clone of Flash (wrongly IMHO).