The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development book is oriented to Flash developers interested in building desktop applications via Adobe AIR. You can preorder The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development on Amazon or buy it on local bookstore starting from 22nd December.
The Essential Guide to Flash CS4 AIR Development is now available across bookstores ! Today Andrew Shorten, Adobe Evangelist, who contributed a chapter and wrote the foreword for the book ( I am very pleased about that), has just published an excerpt from his chapter:
When viewing Flash or other content on the Web, the user is guaranteed a certain level of protection by the restrictions placed upon what the content can and can’t do when running within the confines of the browser sandbox. For example, a SWF running within Flash player can only write a limited amount of data to a very specific location on the user’s hard drive without direct user interaction.
The limited access to local system resources available to browser content means that users can browse the Web, consume content, and interact with applications without giving much regard to security, except in circumstances when they are explicitly providing personal or sensitive data over the internet.
Unlike browser-based applications, AIR applications have the same user privileges as native desktop applications, allowing them full access to the local file system. This means that a SWF running within the air runtime can read, write, and delete data anywhere on the local system, subject to the restrictions placed upon applications by the operating system.
To mitigate the risk to the user from installing an application, Adobe requires that AIR applications be signed by their publisher, so as to securely associate their identity with the application and to guarantee that after release, someone other than the publisher hasn’t amended the application code.
While it is possible to create your own digital certificate for use with AIR applications, such self-signed certificates don’t provide the user with the guarantee that you are who you say you are. In order to instill user confidence and guarantee that you are the publisher, it is necessary to obtain a digital certificate signed by a trusted third-party vendor. These trusted third parties, or CAs, validate your identity as a publisher and issue you with a certificate that you can use to sign your air application with.
Read the full article on his blog : Digitally signing an Adobe AIR application
Thank you Marco, I buy the book today at Amazon. Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo
Posted by: mario fernandes | December 22, 2008 at 11:30 PM