Adobe is developing a new SDK, called SwitchBoard,  that allows AIR apps to talk to the Creative Suite apps.

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.