RefreshingApps.com

EBay desktop application has been in development since AIR was called Apollo in the beta, under the project name San Dimas.

The desktop application is one of the most feature rich AIR apps around today. Built on top of eBay’s existing API to make managing auction bidding and searching faster and easier. This is game changing for eBay users and offers a whole new way of interacting with the sites content.

Everything you need to browse and bid is easily found within the interface. The live filtering of your search results using the clever related keywords panel and categories is intuitive and fast. The main view of auctions shows how long each auction item has left in real time, no more refreshing of the webpage. You can tailor this view to show a standard list with small images, skinny view or large picture view.

Selecting an auction to view in detail slides the information panel into view while retaining your results list to the left. Within the detail auction view you can flip through the photos just like real photographs with a small animation. The desktop app give you more information within this screen than it’s web counterpart with a dynamic finesse that invites you to play with the tabbed interface for seller information, bids and payment information. Any bids are updated in realtime as well as any alerts that you have set up.

The application now comes with a video tutorial for new users to give an overview of the features. This is a good concept because the app is that different to the website that some people might get confused easily.

One thing that is still missing in the application are the selling features. Apparently it is just not robust enough yet to be opened up for public use. The selling feature was demonstrated very early on in the project’s development where a seller could use an inbuilt webcam to take snapshots of an item then upload them within the advert. This feature would complete the app, until then it is still a piece missing from the jigsaw.

I believe that watching how larger corporations like eBay are using the AIR platform can help all of us when building apps for the desktop in AIR.

There is an eBay desktop blog if you are interested in keeping up with the latest on this app.

Design eye

The design is on brand yet significantly different and embraces the features of AIR well. The app was designed and built by the guys at Effective UI and like all of their work is really cutting edge.

Technical eye

Built using Adobe Flex and the Cairngorm micro-architecture Adobe have a small case study on the application which can be found here. The data services for the application are provided by the eBay API.