The title of this book seems very interesting but a little intimidating. "Breaking out of the Web Browser" provides a good understanding of the history of information systems and claims that AIR can supersede a web browser by overcoming its limitations by providing more and better features. This book is meant to be used by Web Developers who have a programming background preferably in Flex or Actionscript. The majority of content in this book is based on exploring a time tracker application which has its own pros and cons. In my opinion, it is a great book to start learning AIR although not that comprehensive in detail.
After starting to read this book, it seems to me that this book is more geared towards somebody who is a beginner in developing AIR Desktop applications. It sounds a little contradicting with the "Intermediate" book level printed on the back of this book. I do see that one requires an intermediate level of programming language to understand its contents.
The books starts with a good preface about the internet era going from the mainframe to the client-server model to the RIA development model. It also gives a good introduction about what AIR can do and provides are good entry into the subject. I am really not sure why the authors chose to base the book on a time tracker application. It is similar to a story telling approach but in this case I have already lost my interest to an extent due to the thought of developing an application which I have no desire to build. I think that having more examples would have made this book a much more interesting read.
The first chapter of this book allows a web developer familiar with HTML with JavaScript, Flash, or Flex to create AIR applications. Again, I do not know why the authors chose to develop the rest of the chapters of this book based on a time tracker applications for understanding the functionality of AIR. I can agree with the authors to a certain extent about why one needs a pretext to dive into the book but to me it doesn't seem to be helpful in the long run.
Chapter Two of the book explains how AIR can interact with the OS clipboard. I do not see the importance of including such a chapter towards the beginning of the book while I am trying to learn the basic functionalities AIR can provide. I am a beginner in AIR but I do have a moderate amount of flex experience. I can see why the time tracker application does require a clipboard interaction but it isn't that appealing in nature.
The flow of information from Chapter Four onwards is smooth and well maintained. Authors do an excellent job in explaining the drag and drop functionality in AIR, the benefits of using a SQLite database with direct access to the file system which according to me is a definite win over the web browsers due to their inability in interacting with the OS directly.
Chapter Seven is geared towards the general look and feel of the AIR application. I just love the idea of enabling applications to handle networking and user activity events in addition to having an auto-update feature using the AIR framework.
Chapter Nine explores the use HTML content in an AIR application. I am not sure why the authors chose not to mention that fact that all HTML tags are not supported by AIR application. It seems like they are advocating the use of AIR without providing its limitations. They starts off the chapter by mentioning that AIR uses the same HTML rendering engine as the Apple's Safari browser.
In the next chapters, authors do a good job of explaining several ways to interact with a web server for exchanging remote data using SOAP, REST, AMF, RTMP, and Sockets. Chapter Eleven continues to explain the benefits of using Adobe Blaze DS which provides an efficient and sophisticated mechanism to interact with server data. However, the introduction to Blaze DS is not up to the mark. It would have been helpful to include more visual representations of what Blaze DS can or cannot do.
Chapter Twelve includes details about using Fluint testing framework while Chapter Thirteen gives a good tutorial about deploying AIR applications. The book concludes by providing a understanding of the AIR security and conveying some best/worst practices approach for developing AIR applications.
This book could serve as a good introduction to a person having a good background in flex. Although the book is based on a time tracker application, an experienced flex programmer can start by choosing the chapter or topic of their choice. I think the book is great for getting a general idea of the features AIR provides but you are definitely looking at spending time on other books or tutorials available on the web to get the things going as you want.
