I decided to start playing around with Adobe Air, and I’m impressed. Especially in conjunction with the Ext JS library, it looks like you can create some pretty cool things quite easily. Since it’s downloaded as an app, and not a web site, the size of the javascript libraries that you might use don’t really matter as much. Despite my devotion to the lightweight Mootools, I think I’ll have to give Ext a try when it comes to making things for AIR. I did, however, get my most recent Flash without Flash demo working in it without troubles.

The only thing I found a bit odd is that opacity for elements is not supported. I’m not sure why they’d even do that. Another thing I noticed is that effects don’t run as smoothly in AIR than in a regular browser. I would have thought they’d run extra smooth, but I guess not. Perhaps it’ll speed up once it’s out of beta.

I found a neat app called Google Analytics Suite that hooks up with your Google Analytics account and displays it on your desktop! That’s the most useful app I’ve found so far. The ones Adobe showcases don’t seem all that great.

My idea for a useful app is to use the Flickr api to make an image management interface with drag-and-drop features. If you wanted to upload an image to our account, all you’d have to do is drag it from your desktop or folder and drop it in the AIR app. And To save images just drag them from the app to your desktop! I’m not sure if I’ll actually attempt that. I’ll have to do more research first. But after doing some research, I’ve discovered that Flickr has official tools that do the same thing. Guess I’ll have to think of something else.

If you’ve got any AIR apps, post them below!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 11:59 am and is filed under web development and tagged with adobe-air, analytics, desktop, ext, google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.