Adobe® SwitchBoard Technology

Now AIR applications can drive the Creative Suite!

In 2007, Adobe announced Adobe AIR™ - the Adobe Integrated Runtime - for creating stand-alone web applications based on the web standards of HTML, Flash®, and Ajax. The AIR environment allows developers to create dynamic, appealing, cross-platform applications. Now, with the Adobe technology code named SwitchBoard, AIR applications can communicate with applications in the Adobe Creative Suite®.

Adobe AIR developers can create applications that participate as first class citizens in creative workflows. Each SwitchBoard solution consists of an AIR application written for SwitchBoard, JavaScripts, and the SwitchBoard service that delivers the scripts to the Creative Suite applications. AIR developers only need to include a Flex library called SwitchBoard.swc in their projects in order to send and receive scripts to and from Creative Suite applications.

SwitchBoard brings together the power of the automation in the Creative Suite applications with the potential for third parties to extend the creative process with new applications produced using AIR. The result is an extensible, powerful, cross-platform environment that can quickly adapt to today's rapidly changing creative workflows.

Windows and Vista

1. Uninstall prior versions of SwitchBoard before installing a new version. Choose “Add or Remove Programs” from the Control Panel, select Adobe SwitchBoard, and click Change/Remove.
2. Download the SwitchBoard ZIP file and unzip the package. The package contains a Setup.exe application.
3. Install SwitchBoard by launching the Setup.exe application.

Macintosh

1. Uninstall prior versions of SwitchBoard before installing a new version. Double-click the Adobe SwitchBoard alias in the /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installer folder.
2. Download the SwitchBoard DMG file.
3. Double-click the DMG item to mount the installer virtual disk. The virtual disk contains a Setup application.
4. Install SwitchBoard by launching the Setup application.

After you install SwitchBoard, the SwitchBoard service and the SwitchBoard launcher run in the background.

Installing SwitchBoard SDK

The SwitchBoard SDK contains:

1. SwitchBoard.swc enables AIR applications to communicate with Creative Suite applications.
2. AIRSend is a sample AIR project that sends scripts to Creative Suite target applications and waits for results and errors.
3. InDesign Example is a sample AIR project that imports an XML document into InDesign.
4. Photoshop Example is a sample AIR project that converts an image to a png file.
5. SwitchBoard API Reference, Getting Started with SwitchBoard, and SwitchBoard Inter-Application Communication documentation

To install the SDK, follow these steps:

Windows and Vista

1. Download the SDK ZIP file.
2. Unzip the package and navigate to the unzipped location.

Macintosh

1. Download the SDK DMG file.
2. Double-click on the DMG item to mount the installer virtual disk.