Adobe AIR Apps

The various Adobe AIR based Twitter clients I've been trying over the past couple of weeks got me interested in taking another look at Adobe AIR. So, I decided to take a closer look at it. Wikipedia says that AIR is an acronym for Adobe Integrated Runtime. But, I don't see that acronym spelled out on the various Adobe web pages related to AIR. I am guessing that it is one of names that used to be an acronym but was rebranded as a non-acronym. AIR is a cross-platform runtime for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X that lets web development technologies such as HTML, Ajax, and Flash in desktop applications. It is part of the trend towards Rich Internet Applications (RIA) which are browserless client-side Internet applications. I've found it very useful to be able to use the same AIR based applications when shifting between my Mac and a PC. Here's what I've learned about what AIR applications available and useful from my perspective.

As of June 3, 2008, the Adobe AIR Marketplace listed 168 AIR applications available for download. I wouldn't be surprised to see hundreds more AIR applications appear by the end of the year. That said, as you might guess, a significant number of the current applications are games, RSS readers, and various interfaces to popular web services like Flickr, eBay, and Twitter. However, there are some gems and some rough cuts that will look very nice after some software polishing. Here are the AIR apps that are regularly found on my Mac's screen(s).

I've found myself dedicating the second screen of my dual display system to a bunch of AIR apps lately. You can see Adobe Media Player taking up a big chunk of the display here. The Snackr RSS feed reader scrolls along the bottom of the screen. And, I have two twhirl Twitter windows up in the left corner.

I initially dismissed Adobe Media Player as just another video player. That's what happens when you judge something without actually trying it. However, I changed my opinion after trying it for a few weeks. I fire it up a couple of times a week now to sample video podcasts and other videos in its catalog. It is a lot faster to sample this way than using iTunes (with or without an iPod).

Snackr is a very cool RSS feed reader that scrolls feeds on the bottom of the screen. I populated it quickly by exporting an OPML file of all my RSS/Atom feeds and importing it into Snackr. As you can see from its options windows here, it is ready to work with a dual display system. Clicking on an item as it scrolls by pauses the scrolling and brings up a window containing the full feed information. A view post button on the bottom left launches your default browser and displays the the feed item's original web page. Snackr is frequently running on my system. It is not distracting when running on a second display. You can hide it on a single display to keep it from distracting you while letting it update feed information in the background.

I keep saying I am not addicted to Twitter. And, yet, it is pretty much always running on my Mac or smartphone. I use twhirl to keep track of my two Twitter accounts. One is a private account that I tweet on with personal friends. The other is my public account where I tweet only about tech topics. You can find that account at: http://twitter.com/toddogasawara.

Acrobat.com for My Desktop is a new AIR app from Adobe itself. It works with the recently launched Acrobat.com site that provided a web word processor (Buzzword), limited web conferencing, limited (5 files) PDF creation, and file storage (5GB max) and sharing. I was disapppointed to find that selecting the Buzzword web word processor actually launches my browser to bring it up instead of internalizing the experience within the My Desktop client-side window. Signing in to the My Files area is a hit or miss for me. Files are listed some times but not all of the time. I'm not quite sure what is going on there. The files do not seem to get deleted. They just are not listed now and then. It is a beta-release though. So, I'll reserve judgement until the production version is available. This is not a web office suite in the Google Docs or Zoho sense. However, Buzzword (acquired by Adobe) is a capable and rich word processor. You'll probably find yourself using it instead of a traditional word processor some of your writing work. Adobe needs to integrate its PhotoShop Express and build a few more productivity apps before Acrobat.com becomes a truly interesting site. And, it needs to get tighter integration between the Acrobat.com for My Desktop AIR client to provide a better end-user experience.

I plan to reguarly check on the Adobe AIR Marketplace for new AIR applications to try out. If you are a developer, you might want to check out the Adobe AIR Developer Center where you can learn more about developing AIR applications using HTML/Ajax, Flash, and Flex.