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“Adobe Integrated Runtime, also known as Adobe AIR, codenamed and originally called Apollo[1], is a cross-OS runtime environment for building Rich Internet Applications, using Flash, Flex, HTML and Ajax, that can be deployed as a desktop application.” (Wikipedia, retrieved 19:33, 17 November 2007 (GMT0)).
“The Adobe® AIR® runtime includes both the WebKit HTML and Adobe Flash® engines, enabling you to build applications using HTML, JavaScript, Flash, or Flex. Because Adobe AIR supports these technologies equally, you can use the tools with which you are already familiar to build web applications in the browser.” (AIR development tools, retrieved Sept 29 2010).
AIR applications can be developed with a variety of tools, in particular:
See Adobe's AIR development tools for an updated list.