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Adobe AIR is a cross-platform, lightweight deployment environment based on Adobe's Flash Player. It combines the expressiveness of Flash with the familiarity and features of traditional desktop applications. Combined with the server-side power and flexibility of PHP, Adobe AIR applications are redefining Rich Internet Application (RIA) development. This course, by seasoned Flex/AIR and PHP integration specialist Richard Bates, is designed for PHP developers at all skill levels. Viewers will learn AIR fundamentals and advanced integration techniques using real-world applications and common feature-set requirements. Work files are included. To begin learning today, simply click on the movie links.
Welcome to the Virtual Training Company's course on developing applications with Adobe AIR and PHP. I'm Richard Bates and I'll be your instructor for this video course. So, first of all, why use Adobe AIR? Well, your users will get rich and engaging visuals from the applications you create for Adobe AIR. Because it's built on the Flash Player it includes a lot of built-in graphics capabilities. Things you create with Adobe AIR will also run on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines with little or no code modification on your part. Finally, your end users will also enjoy a quick and simple installation. This is true both of the Adobe AIR Runtime, and usually of your applications as well. So, why use PHP for our server-side facilities? Well, first of all, PHP is both powerful and stable. It's currently in version 5. PHP also enjoys the widest support on the Web, outpacing its competitors by a huge margin. PHP is also free for you to download and use in your applications and it's open-source, which means developers all over the world can contribute to the functionality and stability of PHP. Finally, PHP gives us lots of options for communication between the server and the AIR clients we'll be creating. In this course, we'll be learning how to create Desktop applications for Adobe AIR using the Adobe Flex Builder IDE, or Integrated Development Environment. We'll also learn how to create custom web services with PHP, and finally we'll learn how to connect the AIR applications we create with the server-side PHP code. Along the way, we're also going to cover some other topics including AIR User Interface Controls and Validation. We'll also delve into ActionScript 3, one of the programming languages you'll use creating your applications with Flex Builder. We're also going to address data storage using the MySQL server and databases. We'll also cover using third party APIs, like those provided by FedEx and PayPal in your applications. We'll also discuss some of the more advanced AIR functionality, like the Encrypted Local Data Store, Local SQL Databases and manipulating files and folders on the user's computer. There are a couple of prerequisites for this course. Some familiarity with Web Server concepts, like server-side processing will be helpful Ð just the basic event flow from the user to the server and back again. You'll also need basic knowledge of PHP, like data types and syntax. You don't have to be a PHP expert, but the more you know the more you'll be able to extend the examples we cover here. Finally, you'll need basic computing skills on your Operating System Ð just creating files and folder structures, permissions, and things like that. There are also some additional resources you should know about for this course. The Workfiles and source code for the examples we'll cover along the way are included, so be sure to take advantage of those. Also, the PHP Language Reference online is a great resource for the PHP Programming Language and its usage. Similarly, the Adobe AIR Programming Guide provided by Adobe on their website includes a lot of information on the AIR Classes and Concepts we'll be talking about.