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Reviewed Showcase App

Espresso reader

March 04th 2009 | by James

(8 votes, 3.8/5)

What is it with naming apps after coffee recently? Oh well here is an Adobe AIR application called EspressoReader. It is a desktop client for Google Reader and not the first we have reviewed here on RefreshingApps.com.

We reviewed ReadAIR back in May 2008 and loved the desktop capabilities of Google Reader coupled with a nice UI. ReadAIR was built using HTML & CSS and was open source. EspressoReader is it’s opposite – built using a new framework called OpenPyro that is currently work in progress.

OpenPyro is a pure AS3 framework for creating RIA’s. OpenPyro draws a lot of inspiration from Flex but aims to be more expressive as well as have a smaller filesize and memory footprint.

The app currently doesn’t remember your login details and requests them on each launch. I have rather a long password so I’m not to keen on constantly typing it in. Could this be stored locally?

There is a feedback page setup on UserVoice to gather info from the user community. This is a great way to get useful feedback on your AIR application and something I recommend for all developers.

Video Review

Espresso Reader - AIR application review from RefreshingApps on Vimeo.

Design eye

Nice looking application with a minimal skin. I would like to have seen more informative button states, for example to show if I am looking at All Feeds or just Unread Feeds.

An option to close or expand all the folders would aide better usability for those users with more than just a few folders of feeds.

Possibly a live icon in the dock or system tray giving an indication of how many unread feeds there are.

Technical eye

Built using OpenPyro and the Adobe AIR.

In Summary

I did find that the application had a tendency to lock up when trying to access new feeds. This might be related to the parsing of Google Reader or the OpenPyro framework. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

It is a nice looking application although the Google Reader desktop client market is getting busy with ReadAIR and the updated unreviewed ShareFire reader hot on its heals.

Some nice UI touches like the photos view and the three column layout is different to other reader clients. Worth a look but keep an eye on it’s progress.

Your Comments and Views

Z said on March 05th 2009 at 10.28 am

way too early in development to be useful. i’ll wait for more update because now, at least for me, it’s useless.

arpit said on March 05th 2009 at 6.52 pm

Hi
Thanks for reviewing Espresso. Like mentioned in the blog the application was early alpha so it does lack some functionality. One of the main reasons for developing the application was to run OpenPyro through its paces and thats still work in progress. I am hoping to release a new version soon so stay tuned.

James said on March 05th 2009 at 10.33 pm

Thanks arpit, that I kind of what I thought that it was like a test bed for your new framework and I was keen to emphasise it was an alpha.

Nice work so far and I wish you well with the project, keep us updated on the app and the frameworks progress.

James

X-Ninji said on March 08th 2009 at 7.37 pm

...heh, expected this to be a coffee calculator or something. Hmm.

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