If dropped wireless connections, wifi black holes and other connection woes are stifling your love of web-based application, brace yourself -- the offline functionality of your favorite web apps just got a boost from Adobe's new AIR platform.

The new Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), the successor to what was previous code-named Apollo, now features support for HTML/Javascript applications in addition to the company's proprietary Flash technology.

Adobe AIR, will pit the company against Microsoft's Silverlight platform, Java's JavaFX development tools, Google's recent Google Gears and even perhaps even Firefox, in the race to bridge the divide between browser-based and desktop applications.

While the field seemed to be shaping up along the classic battle lines of programming frameworks -- Flash developers favoring AIR, .NET coders embracing Silverlight and open source fans following Firefox's lead -- Adobe is hoping to widen Apollo's impact by opening the doors to users who may not actually own any Adobe products.

"We're really excited by the level of interest that we've seen amongst the developer community," says Pam Deziel Director of Product Management for Adobe's Platform Unit. "Now that AIR has enhanced AJAX support, we expect to see that huge community begin to experiment with AIR as well."

Jesse James Garrett, president of Adaptive Path, who coined the phrase AJAX, believes that AIR may end up freeing AJAX from the shackles of the browser. Historically the problem for HTML developers has been the fact that there's no easy way to port their code to the desktop environment. 

"I think that AJAX developers have kind of been running up against the constraint of the browser for a while now -- there's a lot of code from your browser application that you'd have to throw out for the offline portion of your app." Says Garrett.

More code means more work for developers, but AIR is changing that. "The advantage of AIR is the reusability of that code outside the browser," says Garrett.

While Adobe initially launched Apollo primarily as a tool for Flash and Flex developers, Deziel says the company planned to target HTML and Javascript from the beginning, but concedes that it took longer to add the functionality because of cross platform issues.

"it wasn't that HTML was never considered to be a first class citizen, but we had additional work to do on the HTML and Javascript side."

Flash and AJAX developers have long touted the various merits of each platform at the expense of the other, but that has changed in recent years and even Adobe now seems eager to embrace a community it once saw as a competitor.

But the AJAX community may not be so eager to return the embrace -- many in the AJAX community favor the platform for its open source nature and reject Flash on the grounds that it involves proprietary and expensive Adobe tools.

For its part Adobe says there's no lock-in with AIR. Deziel says that "developers can employ the same code and tools that they use for browser implementations, so they are not locked
into any aspect of AIR development."

Adobe even says they are working with Google to align the APIs used to access local database storage for offline applications, which Deziel says "will be consistent for developers both in the browser and via Adobe AIR on the desktop. "

In the battle for web-app space on your desktop, the dust is far from settled. "It's too soon to say what the relative advantages of each platform will be, says Garrett, "it may be that they all find their place."