Create your first HTML-based AIR application with Dreamweaver

Your Adobe AIR application must have a start page and all of its related pages defined in a Dreamweaver site:

1. Start Dreamweaver and make sure you have a site defined.

2. Open a new HTML page by selecting File > New, selecting HTML in the Page Type column, selecting None in the Layout column, and clicking Create.

3. In the new page, type Hello World!

   This example is extremely simple, but if you want you can style the text to your liking, add more content to the page, link other pages to this start page, and so on.

4. Save the page (File > Save) as hello_world.html. Make sure you save the file in a Dreamweaver site.

For more information on Dreamweaver sites, see Dreamweaver Help.

1. Make sure you have the hello_world.html page open in the Dreamweaver Document window. (See the previous section for instructions on creating it.)

2. Select Site > Air Application Settings.

   Most of the required settings in the AIR Application and Settings dialog box are auto-populated for you. You must, however, select the initial content (or start page) of your application.

3. Click the Browse button next to the Initial Content option, navigate to your hello_world.html page, and select it.

4. Next to the Digital signature option, click the Set button.

   A digital signature provides an assurance that the code for an application has not been altered or corrupted since its creation by the software author, and is required on all Adobe AIR applications.

5. In the Digital Signature dialog box, select Sign the AIR package with a digital certificate, and click the Create button. (If you already have access to a digital certificate, you can click the Browse button to select it instead.)

6. Complete the required fields in the Self-Signed Digital Certificate dialog box. You’ll need to enter your name, enter a password and confirm it, and enter a name for the digital certificate file. Dreamweaver saves the digital certificate in your site root.

7. Click OK to return to the Digital Signature dialog box.

8. In the Digital Signature dialog box, enter the password you specified for your digital certificate and click OK.

   Your completed AIR Application and Installer Settings dialog box might look like this:

   View full size graphic

   For further explanation about all of the dialog box options and how to edit them, see Creating an AIR application in Dreamweaver.

9. Click the Create AIR File button.

   Dreamweaver creates the Adobe AIR application file and saves it in your site root folder. Dreamweaver also creates an application.xml file and saves it in the same place. This file serves as a manifest, defining various properties of the application.

Now that you’ve created the application file, you can install it on any desktop.

1. Move the Adobe AIR application file out of your Dreamweaver site and onto your desktop, or to another desktop.

   This step is optional. You can actually install the new application on your computer right from your Dreamweaver site directory if you prefer.

2. Double-click the application executable file (.air file) to install the application.

You can preview pages that will be part of AIR applications at any time. That is, you don’t necessarily need to package the application before seeing what it will look like when it’s installed.

1. Make sure your hello_world.html page is open in the Dreamweaver Document window.

2. On the Document toolbar, click the Preview/Debug in Browser button, and then select Preview In AIR.

   You can also press Ctrl+Shift+F12 (Windows) or Cmd+Shift+F12 (Macintosh).

   When you preview this page, you are essentially seeing what a user would see as the start page of the application after they’ve installed the application on a desktop.