In-browser AIR functionality

So, after my previous post moaning about how I think AIR functionality would be ideally suited in-browser, I did a little digging and it turns out you might kind-of be able to acheive some of it!

I've yet to test the feasability of this, but according to Jeffry Houser, local connection works between browser loaded swfs and AIR swfs. What this potentially means is you could create an AIR application that does nothing except run as a local service in the system tray and merely exposes AIR functionality through localconnection.

Take the example of Buzzword in my previous post, they could create an AIR application that does nothing except for offer a simple "saveLocal" function. The online version could then check through localconnection to see if that AIR application is available and if so offer users the facility to save their document locally (obviously if localconnection fails then it offers only the online version).

Jeffery raises concerns on the security side of things, but I'm not so sure that it is a problem, it comes down to the age old point of educating users to just be vigilent in who they download applications from.

I'm going to see if I can come up with a proof-of-concept for this but unfortunately have a lot on right now so if anyone else feels like having a go feel free and let me know how it goes.