RefreshingApps.com

This AIR application is for property searching in Florida in the US. Interestingly I have yet to see any RIA or desktop apps written on the Flash Platform for the UK property market.

In their own words:

Real Estate in Florida is a powerful and fast desktop property search where you can search homes by city, filter results, view photos of homes, compare homes, locate homes in a map, save favorites properties and save searches and filters.

This is an Adobe Flex application that has been tailored for the desktop using AIR. You can search for specific properties and drill down the data using the form options and a dual slider for property price range selection.

As the properties are the main focus of this application they are shown in a side drawer panel that appears after you initial search. Selecting a property takes you to a detail page but includes all the other properties in a list to the side for easy selection.

Video Review

Blue One Realty AIR Application from RefreshingApps on Vimeo.

RefreshingApps.com reviews this Adobe AIR Application

Design eye

Design has been kept to a minimum and in some areas the attention to detail has gone. One of the first things I noticed was the zoom in and out buttons on the map were the wrong way round compared to the standard convention that people expect (see the screencast).

Secondly I’m not sure who decided that they should squeeze the scroll bars to that miniature size, but they sure should not work in UX or UI design. They don’t fit, are hard to see and hit plus they jump around when you click on them – fail.

Adding the rounded corners on the property images smoothes the sharpness and I think this is a good decision. I just wish they had spent a little time in skinning the form components so they don’t look like the Halo skin.

Technical eye

Built using Adobe Flex, Adobe ColdFusion 8 and the Adobe AIR SDK.

In Summary

It’s not a ground breaking AIR app but shows the ease in which you can take a Flex application even with the standard Halo skin and some very slight modifications and create a chromeless desktop application that is guaranteed to make you stand out from your competitors that only have a poor HTML website.