Lee Graham's Digital Home

I have to disagree with Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff. While Apps are the popular thing right now, there is too much fragmentation between Operating Systems. iPhone/iPad support this 3D HTML5, Android supports Flash, Blackberry does this, Symbian does that... yada, yada, yada...

Then on top of OS fragmentations, you have fragmentations between different versions of the OS. For example, the iPhone 4 & iPhone 3GS is running the 4th version (iOS 4) of the iPhone OS and can do multi-tasking with apps, while the iPhone 3G can run the iPhone iOS 4, but it can't do multi-tasking with apps. Then the iPads aren't getting the iOS 4 until Q4 of this year, so whoever has an iPad you won't be able to do multi-tasking until then. Yes, fragmentation will always exist because of better technology, but obviously less fragmentation is better than more fragmentation.

A solution to fragmentation is web apps! All browser support HTML. I'm still not touting HTML5 as the savior from fragmentation completely, but I am saying that is can help.

From a developer's or product manager's standpoint it would be easier and much more cost effective to develop multiple web views with HTML, than to have specialized teams developing an app for the iPhone, the iPad, the Desktops, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, etc... Right there you are up to 6 various apps platforms, 6 completely different operating systems (iOS, Windows, Mac OS X, Android OS, RIM & Symbian), and at least 2 different programming languages (Java & Objective-C). Developing apps is a hassle, time consuming and most developers only specialize in one or two languages.

I think apps are a great tool for the here and now, but in the coming years I'm betting mobile web will end up as the king.

Resources:

• The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet - Wired.com
• Location 2012: Death Of The Information Silos - TechCrunch.com
• Is The Web Dead? - Fred Wilson

Are you receiving this error, "Unable to build a valid certificate chain for the signer" when you try to compile your AIR either via Flash or the AIR SDK ADT?

I'm using a Mac running OS X 10.6.4 and Firefox 3.6.8. I've been having this issue for a few weeks now while I've been trying to sign my AIR app so I can publish it to the Adobe Marketplace. I've followed the documentation from from Adobe and Thawte on how to export my Code Signing Certificate (CSC), but I still get this freaking error, "Unable to build a valid certificate chain for the signer"!

The only official documentation I could find was lacking:

• Adobe -http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/signing_air_applications_print.html
• Thawte - https://search.thawte.com/support/ssl-digital-certificates/index?page=content&id=SO6899&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1280805285653

After a couple of suggestions from the fine support people at Thawte didn't work, reading countless FAQs, searching forums, trying every single Google Search trick I wasn't able to find a solution. Joe Ward at Adobe pointed me in the right direction! I finally figured it out and thought I would document it here, so it you have a similar issue, hopefully this is a well documented solution for you other Adobe AIR Developers out there. See below...

RESOLVE THE CSC ERROR:

1. Download & unzip thawte-roots.zip from: https://www.thawte.com/roots/index.html
2. Open Firefox and go to Preferences -> Advanced tab -> Encryption -> View Certificates
3. In the View Certificates window, go to Authorities and click Import...
4. Browse over to your unzipped Thawte Roots folder -> Thawte Code Signing -> Code Signing CA
5. Select Thawte Code Signing CA.pem and click Open
6. You should get an alert window that states this is either "successfully installed" OR "already installed
7. Click the OK button
8. Repeat these steps to import: Thawte Roots folder -> Additional Thawte Roots -> thawte Primary Root CA -> thawte_Primary_Root_CA.pem
9. Re-export your certificate
   

I've found that both Adobe and Thawte didn't document this error/solution very well. If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact me and I'll help out as much as possible.