July 6, 2008
Adobe AIR Is Cooler Than You
As much as I wanted to like and use the heck out of Apple’s Widgets, the fact is the novelty wore off quickly. There are only so many times I can get a chuckle out of the dancing hula girl, and their diminuitive size is as much a handicap as an asset to even the productivity-oriented Widgets.
Enter Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), a cross-platform widget development framework. AIR allows developers to use existing HTML/Ajax, Flash and Flex to create OS-independent widgets. In plain English, the user can run small desktop applications that replicate and often enhance the experience of using a web browser.
I’m torn about having a slew of desktop apps running all the time, as I’m not a fan of clutter. But there are a few AIR apps I’ve found to be incredibly useful, even essential.
feedalizr
feedalizr (note the catchy Web 2.0 lack of capitalization and the elimination of a vowel, letting you know it’s the FUTURE) is a nifty little app that allows you to post to some of your most favorite w2.0 sites–Twitter, Friendfeed, Flickr, Jaiku–from the comfort of one sexy little interface on your desktop.
The app uses the Friendfeed API as its back end, so sometimes there’s a bit of a delay between when you post to when it shows up in feedalizr–a factor I can overlook.
It’s akin to having iChat, Adium or any other instant messaging window, except it gives you an integrated feed from the aforementioned services. See what your friends are up to, and to post just click the corresponding service’s button at the top of the interface and let ‘er rip with a drag-and-drop. Simplicity defined.
You can also open tabs within the app to monitor specific friend’s feeds, which is pretty smokin’.
I’m back-and-forth on the other feature of feedalizr, called “toasters.” Toasters are pop-ups that are displayed when a new item is added to your feed. Fortunately, you can disable this feature easily. Fun for a minute, but my easily-distracted eye couldn’t handle it. I can see how some might enjoy it.
Overall: thumbs way up.
kuler
Again with the w2.0 lack of caps. I’ve really got to let this go.
Anyway, Adobe’s kuler is a great tool for designers of all stripes, but especially for those who are designing for the web. Create your own color swatches and share them with the kuler community, or browse swatches created by others.
Find something you like? Grab it by either clicking to copy the hexadecimal values for that theme or, if you’re a registered user, download the theme as a package.
You can view themes by popularity, rating, freshness, or random. Themes are also searchable by keywords, for instance “cool summer refreshing.”
If you’re like me and have no formal art training, kuler is essential. Thumbs way way up.
Analytics Reporting Suite
Going old school with capital letters and all vowels intact (sorry, I just can’t get over it), Analytics Reporting Suite is an excellent desktop interface for Google Analytics.
Are you a webmaster/editor or marketing professional? If so, you’d better be spending your recommended one hour a day with analytics and optimization. ARS will help you by providing an attractive application that I actually prefer to the web interface.
Perhaps the best feature is its support for profiles. Webmasters for large sites usually have multiple, even dozens, of profiles for one site.
For example, in my straight job I have an overall department site and over a dozen division sites. I have to provide analytics reports for each division and for the department as a whole. Profiles allow me to do just that.
All the features and functionality of Google Analytics are present: map overlays, visitor trending, and so on. And somehow the process for creating, maintaning and browing profiles is more straightforward than in the web interface.
Absolutely essential.
Websnapshot
Another tool for developers/designers, Websnapshot is the easiest way I’ve seen to create snapshots of web pages.
Enter the URL of the site you wish to capture, select Thumbnail, Browser or Full Page, and then Snap. Just like that, you’ve got an instant grab of the selected site. Done and done.
And that’s all it does. Nothing you don’t need. There are other methods for accomplishing page grabs, but this is by far my favorite.
I can also see this app being helpful for those who create a lot of presentations that show snapshots of web pages. If there’s one thing that’s always welcome in the office, it’s the ability to speed up the process of creating presentations.
GMDesk
This is probably the least essential of the bunch, but still pretty nifty. GMDesk is simply a desktop app for all of your Google applications: Mail, Docs, Calendar, Maps, Reader, Reader, and Picasa.
As much as I appreciate the simplicity of the Google interface, sometimes I want a bit more. Specifically, rather than keeping browser tabs open for each of my Google applications, I want to the ability to switch between them quickly and easily.
I know there are links at the top for each service, but for some reason it tweaks my sensibilities to browse away from a window in a browser to do something else. Plus, if I can get away with keyboard shortcuts, I’m there. I’m guessing there are others like me out there.
GMDesk’s switching mechanism is fantastic: command + [number key] switches deftly between your Google apps. The links are still at the top, as it’s basically a direct port of Google into a desktop app. But again, keyboard shortcuts are hot nuts.
You can also select which Google app you start with in the Preferences dialog. Nice.
Overall
If you’re on a Mac and you make use of Spaces, these apps are the bee’s knees. I keep all my AIR apps in their own space to eliminate desktop clutter.
So one space has Dreamweaver and Photoshop, one for cross-browser testing, a third for Parallels Desktop for cross-platform views, and the fourth for my AIR apps.
That’s it, everything I need for work, neatly organized. The Hotness.
All of these apps and many more are available at the Adobe AIR Marketplace.
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Sweet! Thanks for those. I’m just starting to learn Flex a little, hope to parlay that into some AIR stuff eventually. I actually still use the OSX Dashboard quite a bit, I’m wondering about the system overhead difference between an AIR widget and a Dashboard widget of similar ilk. I’d imagine the AIR widget would be a little more resource-heavy, since most Dashboard widgets are mainly just Javascript.
Man, I just got Feedalizr. Some of this stuff is cool, but some of it is annoying. I don’t know. I think I need to just unsub from some of the more annoying feeds and rooms I am in on FriendFeed. I couldn’t get the Analytics app to work…
My update… Analytics Reporting Suite doesn’t work for me so big thumbs down… something about captcha codes and work arounds. GM Desk is sort of worthless in my opinion. I prefer Fluid for stuff like that.
I will say that I am really into TweetDeck and Twhirl at the moment though.