Archive for the ‘air’ tag
My experience with Adobe Air
Adobe Air is a new software platform from Adobe which mixes JavaScript and Flash technologies to enable developers to make rich Internet applications that can run on desktop computers. It is remarkable in the world of proprietary applications in the sense that it has included Linux support early on.
My previous post about Twitter clients might have hinted that I have had bad experience with Air applications in general. In this post I will vent of some of the grudges I have with this new platform on Linux.
This, again, not a very fair review. I have not taken the time to investigate the odds and ends of the platform and will overlook the developer’s point of view on the platform. I have heard over the tubes that programmers working on applications for the Air platform appreciate it, but that’s as far as my investigation (or lack thereof) have taken me.
Air applications aren’t so cross-platform
I have tried 5 Adobe Air applications, mostly Twitter clients: Spaz, TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, DestroyTwitter, Tumbleweed, Twhirl. Of those 6 applications only the later 3 worked out of the box on Ubuntu Hardy. The fact cross-platform compatibility isn’t guaranteed by using Air seems to be well-known of developers and most some them will not officially support Linux as an operating platform. This is a very bad average for a technology that is supposed to be cross-platform.
Air applications don’t fail gracefully
The failure mode for each of the non-working applications in also needs to be taken into account when judging quality of the cross-platform Air applications. The behavior of the applications I have tried is less than stellar. TweetDeck is supposed to work on Linux but in the cases where it fails, it shows a semi-helpful error message. Earlier version of TweetDeck failed in the same with Seemic Desktop fails. Seemisc Desktop works partially but the mail display of the application stays empty. SpaZ shows anything usable. Applications failing to work in such a way are very frustrating for the users because they are left to figure out how to use applications that are put in a undetermined state because of holes in the runtime.
Air applications that work on Linux won’t work on all desktops
Adobe Air doesn’t support anything but GNOME and KDE. I usually have the core components of both KDE and GNOME installed on the computers I use, so running applications relying on either desktop environment is not a problem. This is not the case with Adobe Air applications since they apparently rely on some specific features of GNOME or KDE window managers to work properly. This is something that is very seldom seen in the world of X-Window applications. X-Window Applications relying on components of either desktop will usually be happy running on any window manager.
Despite this, Twhirl will work okay-ish in OpenBox with only some graphical glitches to show for.
Adobe Air requires a compositing manager to decent.
I will admit that I’m rather old school and I have not joined the Compiz bandwagon. I did not use any compositing manager on any desktop I use. That means that all Adobe Air applications that use shaped windows, ie: all the ones I have tried, looked awful until I caved-in and enabled the limited compositing feature of KDE 3.5.
Air applications tend focus on the look
Look and feel was never a strong point of Adobe Flash. Flash based application usually don’t try to blend in in the rest of the system. In Adobe Air, Adobe are obviously trying to enforce some Feel in applications, but on the Look side, a lot still leaves to be desired. All Air applications I have tried put a very strong emphasis on design and not so much on blending with the user’s desktop. DestroyTwitter had been designed with fonts a lot smaller than the default size on my desktop. On my CRT screen, it made the application hardly usable. Even the option to use larger font in DestroyTwitter did not do anything to improve the situation.
The worst offender in that category in the applications I have tried is without a doubt Tumblweed, an offline client for the Tumblr web blog system. I had hoped this application would be nicer than editing blog entries through a web site, which is something I dislike. I was mistaken…
The application was removed after a few seconds as it obviously did not focus very much on making editing pleasant.
Okay, I swear this will be my last Twitter inspired post…
