Building Killer Desktop RIA's

Luis Polanco gave a nice breeze seminar about Apollo with some nice examples of current web-based applications that convert very well to desktop apps such as customization tools and sales/enterprise related apps.

Personally, I'm floored and can't wait for this. Apollo will open the doors to so many different types of applications that were flat out never feasible or possible to do in the browser. Finally, a true desktop experience without all of the overhead and headache of developing an HTA application.

If you're pressed for time, at least check out the examples that he has...

Check it here...

Leveraging HTML and JavaScript in Apollo Applications

Session from 2006 Adobe Max developer conference. Mike Chambers graciously posted a session that Chris Brichford, an engineer on the Apollo team, has that discussed how you will be able to leverage HTML and Javascript from within Apollo.

Check it out on Google Video...

There are some interesting 'versioning' logic that is being implemented by Apollo, such as it won't need it's own Flash Player install, instead it will use whatever the 'system player' is currently. So, down the line, the Apollo runtime may leverage the Flash 11 Plugin.

Also, you will be able to specify a specific version of the WebKit runtime. So, let's say you build your app and only want to test it on a single HTML runtime engine, specify the number in your application and you'll never have to worry about new versions of Apollo having a negative impact on your application.

Apollo

If you haven't already heard about it, I would highly recommend checking out Apollo on Adobe Labs (http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo).

Apollo is promising to be a cross-OS runtime engine that will allow you to leverage Flash, Flex, HTML, and JavaScript in desktop software. The runtime will leverage the WebKit HTML / JavaScript engine, which is what Safari is based on.