The Apollo Alpha and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) both package up your Flex or HTML applications as an .air file that you distribute to your end users. The user simply double-clicks the .air file to install the application and begin using it like any other installed app. But what's in a .air file? Why not take a look for yourself? Simply change the extension from .air to .zip and take a peek.

You'll find the following items:

• the SWF files built from compiling your application
• external files you've included in the app (icons, images, videos)
• a meta-inf (meta information) folder that includes your application descriptor file (application.xml)
• several files that perform the installation

You may be thinking the ability to introspect AIR applications is a security risk to your code. For now, .air files cannot be protected to keep people from looking at their contents.