One of my clients is looking for a simple database driven contact management tool. Don’t think it would need to be have much more than view - browse - edit - delete - add functionality. Ideally it would be the sort of thing that I’d normally provide as part of a website and would use PHP MySQL. However, they’d prefer a desktop solution and I’m thinking Adobe AIR even though it’s not something I’ve used at all.
I was hoping those with a bit more experience might be able to advise on whether this would be a good platform for a novice to tackle such a project or whether I’ve missed a more obvious option that would suit someone whose experience is more backend.
Also wondered whether learning Adobe AIR would be worth the initial battle in terms of markets and commercial opportunities.
When I first looked at Adobe Air it supported three different languages. The JavaScript it supported looke like it wasn’t much different from what could be used with web pages with the addition of things like file processing added to it. So if you are already familiar with one or more of the languages Adobe Air supports you should already know a good part of what you need to know to use Adobe Air.
I did consider XAMP or similar but wasn’t too comfortable with the security side of things. I’m trying to convince them to go for a web solution but if they insist on a desktop approach, am pleased to hear that Adobe Air might not be too tricky to learn.
I’ve used adobe air for both desktop and mobile apps and have found it pretty straightforward, as Felgall has mentioned you can stick to standard html and javascript. The main difference will be using sqlite rather than mysql so I’d have a look at the documentation for the necessary api as there are some limitations to what can be done compared to mysql: