Workflow for developing a desktop AIR application

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/air/build/WS901d38e593cd1bac1e63e3d128d71ecb65-8000.html

SWF-based applications

1. Write the MXML or ActionScript code.

2. Create needed assets, such as icon bitmap files.

3. Create the application descriptor.

4. Compile ActionScript code.

5. Test the application.

6. Package and sign as an AIR file using the air target.

HTML-based applications

1. Write the HTML and JavaScript code.

2. Create needed assets, such as icon bitmap files.

3. Create the application descriptor.

4. Test the application.

5. Package and sign as an AIR file using the air target.

Creating native installers for AIR applications

1. Write the code (ActionScript or HTML and JavaScript).

2. Create needed assets, such as icon bitmap files.

3. Create the application descriptor, specifying the extendedDesktop profile.

4. Compile any ActionScript code.

5. Test the application.

6. Package the application on each target platform using the native target.

Note: The native installer for a target platform must be created on that platform. You cannot, for example, create a Windows installer on a Mac. You can use a virtual machine such as VMWare to run multiple platforms on the same computer hardware.

Creating AIR applications with a captive runtime bundle

1. Write the code (ActionScript or HTML and JavaScript).

2. Create needed assets, such as icon bitmap files.

3. Create the application descriptor, specifying the extendedDesktop profile.

4. Compile any ActionScript code.

5. Test the application.

6. Package the application on each target platform using the bundle target.

7. Create an install program using the bundle files. (The AIR SDK does not provide tools for creating such an installer, but many third-party toolkits are available.)