I have been using Director for many years and was
think about trying to switch over to AIR. I am in
the process of updating an old Director project
with Flash embedded in it and have run across a
few issues that I cant seem to solve with AIR.

1) AIR does not seem to be able to launch external
exe files. Launching Word, Excell, PTT and other
applications from AIR seems problematic. I read
somewhere about launching files through a browser
but it was unclear to me how to do this.

2) I dont see a clear way to port data to a Word
form. My old Director project could control Microsoft
applications through a vbScript Xtra. I could pass
data from the Flash interface to a Word form through
the Director Xtra.

One solution suggested would be to write data from
Flash in binary and creating a Word file this way.
It seemed a long way to go creating and formating a
Word form this way if it the Director solution is much
easier and direct.

Another solution offered was that AIR could copy data
to the clipboard and somehow the Word form could use
a macro to copy the data from the clipboard. The problem
with this solution is that the client does not want
any macros in the Word forms for security reasons.

3) AIR runtime needs to be installed for an AIR file
to run. For the last Director project, there was a lot
of security applied to the end users’ laptops by their
company. This prevented anything from being written
to the C: drive without administrator’s priveleges. To
get around this and installer was made to install the
Director project to the desktop since Director is a
self contained exe and everyone had rights to install
to the desktop. I’m not sure how AIR can get around
this issue.

4) AIR cant seem to provide a list of all the windows
open on the desktop. It does have built-in functions
like orderToBack() and orderToFront which puts all
AIR windows in front or behind all desktop windows.
It must have some way of detecting all windows on
the desktop if it can do this but the functionality
seems to be a protected feature.

So far I have only tried to develop AIR apps with
Flash. Maybe Flex would offer more solutions since
it seems to have some different features. AIR seems to
have the potential to deliver many different solutions.
Regretfully, so far I havent been able to get around
the above obstacles.