19 March 2007

Which Future for Adobe's Apollo?

I have mixed feelings about Adobe's new Apollo:

Apollo is a cross-OS runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop RIA’s [Rich Internet Applications].

On the one hand, it has the F-word in there, and as readers of this blog may know, I am totally allergic to Flash. On the other hand, this seems promising:

We spent a considerable amount of time researching a number of HTML rendering engines for use in Apollo. We had four main criteria, all of which WebKit met:

* Open project that we could contribute to
* Proven technology, that web developers and end users are familiar with
* Minimum effect on Apollo runtime size
* Proven ability to run on mobile devices

While the final decision was difficult, we felt that WebKit is the best match for Apollo at this time.

We shall see (now, if only the Delphic oracle were still around....)

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