Offline applications have often been a thorn in the side of developers. Adobe is coming to the rescue – the company has begun work on a project, dubbed Apollo, which would allow developers to insert hooks for portability to offline clients.
Adobe Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch says that Apollo is one of the first results of Adobe’s merger with Macromedia. Lynch worked for Macromedia, and then served on the companies’ integration team. Apollo was apparently born of several discussions about how Adobe might help developers make use of its array of content presentation technology, including Flash.
The Flash business model is also something the company is keeping in mind, hoping to model Apollo’s version after it. This “standard for delivering high-impact, rich Web content,” as Adobe describes it, has become an extremely popular product since its introduction in 1996.
Lynch says Apollo will come out as a developer release “sometime this year.” It is probably a measure against Microsoft’s looming suite of products that target Adobe’s customer base. Dreamweaver and Flex are two of the endangered programs, and features of the Vista platform could threaten Adobe’s PDF and Flash.
Adobe seems to be preparing for the onslaught, though, and not just with Apollo. A major overhaul of the Flex framework is supposed to ship at the end of the month. The challengers from Microsoft might launch, at the earliest, at the end of the year.
Apollo’s affiliation with Flash technology should help it gain popularity in the market. And depending on how quickly Adobe’s Apollo program progresses, it could provide one more foothold as the company prepares to make its stand against Microsoft.
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Doug is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest eBusiness news.
