Adobe Systems Incorporated on Monday has released its long awaited Alpha version of its new software codenamed Adobe Apollo, providing developers with a free preview of its forthcoming development tool that allows users to run Web applications both online as well as offline.

The first public alpha version of Apollo, which is intended to facilitate the work of Web designers and programmers, is now available for developers on Adobe Labs site, Adobe said.

Developers can download the alpha version of the Apollo application runtime and the Apollo Software Developer's Kit (SDK), which provides a set of command line tools to develop and work with Apollo applications, for free from the site.

Applications that run on Apollo, the code name for a cross-operating system application runtime, will function like normal web applications, but will also function like desktop software as well, meaning it will allow web developers to leverage their existing skills in HTML, JavaScript and Ajax, as well as Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex software to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop.

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