CHAPTER 1 AIR Basics AIR is a runtime that can be installed on computers that are running Windows, Mac, or Linux (at the time of writing, Linux support is currently in beta). After installing AIR (free from http://get.adobe.com/air/), users can install and run AIR applications, which are packaged as files with the extension .air. What this means to you, the developer, is that you can deploy a single .air file to any operating system that has AIR installed without making any changes—one of the greatest benefits of AIR. You can truly write code once and then deploy your application across multiple oper- ating systems. AIR provides multiple development pathways for you to create AIR applications. The free Adobe AIR software development kit (SDK) contains command-line tools and code templates for creating an AIR application and is downloadable from http://www.adobe .com/products/air/. With the AIR SDK, you can create Hypertext Markup Language