Adobe Air On Linux - Fresh (RSS), RoadFinder and Twhirl
Adobe recently released an alpha version of their much-talked about runtime environment, AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), for Linux. I got to try it only yesterday.
Adobe provides the installation package in the form of a binary executable file. The installation was rather simple, I just had to grant execution rights to the binary, using a simple chmod command.
$ chmod +x adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin
After this the installation was simple, I just had to double click on the installer, and follow the instructions. The installation requires your root password.
They have also provided sample applications which you can install just by double clicking on the *.air files, and the launch using their corresponding shortcuts. I found the Fresh and RoadFinder to be interesting utilities and decided to try them out.
Fresh
The first thing that you notice is the shiny light blue interface, which is a clear rip-off from Microsoft’s Ribbon interface. Fresh is an RSS reader, so the first feature you would use in an RSS reader would be the addition or import of your feeds. Fresh has an automatic feed discovery service, which is a must for a news reader. The discovery service is not as efficient as my current RSS reader, Liferea.
Another disappointment was the already existing tons of feeds which I had to delete manually. I want new applications to be wiped clean, and not force their own stuff on me.
The actions take place with stupid and unnecessary visual transitions, such as fade-in and fade-out, which are not even smooth, instead they make the application slow and laggy. The reason why I chose Liferea as a news reader was that it presented me my news in a readable manner, and was snappy and blazingly fast. Fresh is sore on the eyes, and is high on memory usage, so a complete no-no.
RoadFinder
RoadFinder brings Google Maps and Yahoo! Maps to your desktop, by combining them in a simple widget-like, lightweight application. It can prove to be quite useful for guys who actually use Google or Yahoo! Maps extensively, but for people like me, it is nothing more than a toy.
One thing that I noticed because of RoadFinder was that Google Maps kick the shit out of Yahoo! Maps, and a search for the only man-made thing visible from the Moon, the Great Wall of China, made my point clear.
Twhirl
Though these two applications worked just fine for me, but I had an urge to try out applications that were designed for Adobe AIR for Windows and Mac OS X. So I tried out Twhirl, a popular twitter-ing application.
The installation was same as the previous two applications, but a thing was missing - the installer did not create a shortcut in KMenu for launching the application, which the previous two applications did. This shows that the apps in the ’sample apps’ section have been modified suitably to recognize the KMenu and menus from other popular desktop environments from Linux, such as GNOME and Xfce.
I launched the application from the installation directory, and it worked fine, except for some disk permission issues, perhaps. Features include a customisable visual interface and uploading pictures directly to twitpic. The remember password feature and support for Jaiku did not work, even after I entered my Jaiku API key instead of my password, as mentioned in the Jaiku FAQs.
Conclusion
Though AIR is a rage these days, I do not see any future for it in Linux or any mainstream operating system, primarily because it does not integrate with your desktop as much as a native application would do, and thus it would remain a playing tool rather than a mainstream runtime.
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April 8th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
If web apps have been such a great hit, then Adobe AIR should have a great future, it’s just that we need really high bandwidths.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:55 am
1. Why will I EVER use an application that looks so out of place in my working environment? Imagine your web browser having an interface that looks and feels completely different from your chat application’s interface which further looks different from your mail reader’s interface. I don’t just mean the color scheme, but also the interface components like buttons and checkboxes behaving differently.
2. So Adobe is saying that I should ditch native apps and be completely dependent on web apps that can potentially steal data from my computer? What if my internet connection dies down?
3. What about speed? These apps run under a VM. I’m already allergic to Java apps because they suck my system dry of all available computing power. I don’t see how AIR is going to be different.
4. Why another framework? Mail, RSS, maps all work in your web browser which is essentially a virtual machine for JavaScript code. In a way, AIR is just a very fancy web browser, isn’t it? I mean, it’s doing the same task of building an interface from markup and then running some code to pull data off a web server. Big deal.
5. Dynamic languages like Python and Ruby can do all that AIR can do, and that too with native looking interfaces. Why not build desktop applications that connect to the web using Python? It’s easy enough. Arguably easier that AIR is going to be since there is much more community help available AND Python is open source.
AIR is marketing hype. Flash never succeeded on the web until streaming video sites came along. AIR will never succeed on the desktop unless a killer application that absolutely requires the use of AIR comes along.