RefreshingApps.com

about

Thanks for visiting RefreshingApps ,a website for Adobe AIR applications by James Whittaker.

What is RefreshingApps.com ?

The site was built primarily as a showcase and gallery that shows some of the fantastic Adobe AIR applications that are being developed today.

So if you have seen a great AIR app, or you have built something cool go ahead and submit it to our showcase.

Contribute to RefreshingApps ?

Apart from suggesting AIR applications there are other ways in which you can get involved. Do you have or would you like to write a tutorial? Any good ideas for the resources section? If so then please send me a mail and we will take it from there.

What is Adobe AIR ?

AIR is a new offering from Adobe that launched as version 1 in early 2008. It is an exciting new way of bringing rich engaging content built using web technologies like Flash or Flex, AJAX, PDF and HTML to your desktop as native applications. This means that fantastic content and experiences can be delivered outside of the web browser across multiple operating systems.

AIR applications can be more in harmony with your desktop, it natively supports things like dragging and dropping from within your operating system as well as saving and loading files and access to the web.

Adobe AIR brings your Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) to the Desktop – Flash, HTML / AJAX and PDF running as a native application. – Peter Elst 2008.

Read Write Web has a good article on why we need web apps on the desktop.

What does this mean for me, the Developer ?

As a web developer this means that you can start building applications today using your existing skills that will work across many operating system. What you know about Flash and Flex or HTML, CSS and JavaScript will enable you to easily develop AIR applications.

Gone are the days when it required a Computer Science Degree and a full working knowledge of C++ to produce dekstop applications. Even then it would require a re-code to run on Apple Mac’s and then what about Linux?

At RefreshingApps we provide tutorials and resources to help you get to grips with developing AIR applications today and for the future.

So start building and show us your apps!

What does this mean for me, the user ?

Many exciting and useful applications!

Applications that help you to achieve more that you could using a web browser alone. A good example of this is the eBay desktop AIR application. Same eBay but in a redesigned desktop application that includes realtime updates of bid, finer control over search results and a it stores you recent items locally.

I think we have yet to see the full potential of what AIR can be used for. Go and install the AIR runtime then take a look through our showcase and try out some apps. If you don’t like a particular application just uninstall it in the usual way.

Browser support ?

RefreshingApps is built to current web standards and is XHTML valid. The CSS uses some CSS level 3 declarations and so it will currently fail the W3C validator even though there is nothing wrong with the CSS. Use a browser that supports CSS 3 (like Safari 3) and you will see some nice rounded corners and drop shadows, oooo!

This site will not view as intended with IE6 and below. The content will still be available but I cannot guarantee the visual appearance. Currently this site is not optimised for mobile devices.