To develop a desktop application, you would previously have needed to code in a native environment such as C++, Java, etc., compile for the various platforms you wanted to deploy on, and use an installer technology for packaging your application. Now, you can run your Web applications as if they were desktop applications. Apollo, a cross-platform runtime, extends the reach of the Web platform by allowing you to run Web applications on your desktop.

When the network becomes unavailable, you do not loose your session state. The runtime serializes your objects to the local disk. When it detects the presence of a network, it de-serializes them back and synchronises your data. Your web application, along with some metadata, is compressed into an EAR file that can then be deployed from anywhere -- a Web server, local disk, USB drive or any other removable media. Apollo uses the open source HTML engine WebKit for rendering HTML. If you're a Web developer, and you want to develop for Apollo, there's almost nothing new that you need to learn. You can use whatever tools to write HTML and JavaScript or Flash and ActionScript applications that you already know to write.

Ed Rowe of Adobe Systems puts to practice the wisdom, "Show, don't tell!" in this demo of Apollo. He also introduces Flex, a framework that makes writing Flash applications easier than ever before.