"Adobe’s AIR system enabled developers" it still does, AIR v1.0 was in 2006, we are now at v23.0 Electron is nice but a whole browser engine is a big bloat, y

"Adobe’s AIR system enabled developers" it still does, AIR v1.0 was in 2006, we are now at v23.0 Electron is nice but a whole browser engine is a big bloat, you can easily reach 150MB. Not to go into a debate JS vs AS3, but the AIR runtime have a lot of advantages : AS3 the language is one, the default native API cover a lot of ground, being able to extend those native functionalities with ANE (ActionScript Native Extension) is nice too. I don't buy the kool-aid that you could use the exact same HTML5/CSS/JS code for both the browser and a desktop app, unless the app is trivial you gonna have to build your UI/UX specifically for the desktop with all the different subtleties between different OS. So sure you can use something like Electron to easily wrap an already existing web app for the desktop but imho either you are limiting the desktop features you could add or you will soon end up having 2 code base: 1 for the web and 1 for the desktop and that require more resources than just "wrapping it up for the desktop".