RefreshingApps.com

Second AIR widget review following the Kawasaki widget previously reviewed.

Cirque Du Soleil is using Adobe AIR as the delivery framework for their promotional desktop widget. Videos, news and gallery are all present.

This widget is actually just a ported desktop version of the online Flash movie used here. The main giveaway is the ‘grab and share’ feature that offers you the ability to download to desktop, even though you are running the desktop widget! Attention to detail make sure you don’t do the same thing in your widget!

A song player adds atmospheric accompaniment, maybe the songs should have changed depending upon the show theme selected?

Design eye

By selecting a show you dynamically change the AIR widget’s theme. This works really well with a nice reload transition.

I can’t help thinking they could have done so much more with custom chrome on this widget. The top bar with the close and minimise button just looks odd and out of place. This is probably because of the direct port from the browser version.

Technical eye

Built using Adobe Flash and the Adobe AIR.

In summary

Simple widget with nice theme chooser and video although a little small and of varying quality. It does leave me with the though that this should not be an AIR widget at all and should have stayed in the browser as a Flash movie.