Adobe’s Senior Product Evangelist RJ Jacquez has posted an online training session on the new RoboHelp Packager for AIR, a new Adobe Labs download that allows you to roll a RoboHelp project into a standalone app that runs on the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) platform.

AIR is beginning to look like an interesting cross-platform option for online help and performance support systems, since you can include typical navigation aids (such as table of contents, index, search, glossary, favorites, etc.), provide auto-updates and even roll in existing PDF content into a standalone package that will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.

The AIR runtime is a free download that includes a WebKit browser and Adobe Flash engine to enable desktop use of Internet applications — even offline. So while the technology is fairly new, it may prove very useful in the development of cross-platform help solutions.

(via Silke Fleischer)