Webification of Desktops.

Many web players in the market are running for taking early lead in the Desktop share as they have on web. o name few there are Adobe, Google, Mozilla, Fluid, MS. The concept of Desktop presence always fascinate the developers nad for commercial use as user would always have the app/site right on his Desktop, otherwise he has to open a browser and pull down the site to check his mails,videos. "A web browser is only good for Web browsing" and not for your important, daily, must do stuffs like mail, Social networking, Work etc. For all this you always want a desktop App that sits right in front of your eyes. AIR, Prism, Google Gears, Fluid are some of the new techs which helps user to shift his key interest websites from web to his desktop. but out of all these I only think AIR has all the possible capabilities which a desktop app would have and other solutions are more of like answers to some useful ideas and not the complete package. Lets take one by one
Adobe AIR
Adobe AIR is complete solution for desktop versions of your web sites/app as it has all the features of a desktop app from installer to native file access. An AIR app can have a jazzy look n feel as flex can be very easily used in an air app and thats too with added functionalities of Drag n Drop, File systems Access, context menus, integrated web browser(webkit), Multiple windows support, HTML controls etc.

1. It provide a complete installer to user with all the installer options from Licence agreement to Shortcut options to custom installation paths.
2. AIR applications can be built on plane HTML/JavaScript only and not necessarily with MXML/AS(Flex).
3. AIR applications ahve Drag n drop support natively. It allows developer to bundle the dragged data and pass it on the OS native drag manager to handle it OS way, it gives a consistent behavior.
4. Also allows the internal Drag n Drop powered by Flex.
5. AIR apps can have multiple windows which allows user to do things parallaley.
6. It also has a Browser integrated which is the open source webkit.
7. Allows to add custom context menus.
8. Wide variety of HTML controls.
9. Taskbar, System tray presence , tooltips, unistallation via Add/Remove Panel.
10. App would have native file system access.
11. Print Support


Mozilla Prism
Prism is based on a concept called Site Specific Browsers (SSB). An SSB is an application with an embedded browser designed to work exclusively with a single web application. It doesn’t have the menus, toolbars and accoutrements of a normal web browser. Some people have called it a "distraction free browser" because none of the typical browser chrome is used. An SSB also has a tighter integration with the OS and desktop than a typical web application running through a web browser.

1. You can have only shortcut on your Desktop. To Uninstall webapps simply delete the sortcut.
2. Its only your website running in a browser with no chrome and no extra buttons, toolbars.
3. No Native filesystem access.
4. Print support

Google Gears
Google Gears Beta is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using the following JavaScript APIs.There are three major API components to Google Gears

1.A local server that caches and serves application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc).
2.A database (powered by SQLite) that stores the data offline.
3.A worker thread pool that synchronizes data in the background.

10 useful AIR Applications

Here they are for you,

10 useful AIR Applications

AIR Rocks

AIR is Adobe's 4th Plaform, After Postscript, PDF and Flash

Adobe "AIR" - You need AIR to survive!

Is it the lull before the strom?

From last couple of days no big news from any big players in the IT/WEB sector (apart from Adobe AIR launch). Also no news from MS-YAHOO tussle. I think this indicates something big to happen apart from IT slowdown. Google is busy growing and its hard for a big company to remain innovative and growing at the same time. But till now Google did managed this pretty well. From Google official blog it seems Google will be launching Google health soon. Also MS launches its Virtual Earth Beta couple of weeks back but it didn't create mush news. I had gave a try to MS virtual Earth and didn't seem that standard as Google earth is. Also you need to download a browser plugin to view MS maps.

Lets waits if Yahoo investors woos their board members for MS Bid.

Its in the "AIR"

Adobe recently launches their New Technoloy called Adobe AIR. AIR stands for "Adobe Integrated Runtime". AIR is the runtime for all the platforms(windows, Mac and linux) and it let user use the RIA's as desktop Apps. Adobe Air's runtime environment allows developers with access to API (application programming interface) kits from companies to create customized versions of the Web experience -- without the browser. Developers with Flash and HTML abilities can take the information structures of a Web site and create an application that users can download to their desktop, which would then operate just like any other desktop application. This would allow -- among other actions -- users to drag and drop information from any Web site onto their desktop.

Websites such as auctioneer eBay have already developed applications that use the new technology. After a quick download, the eBay users can click the company's logo on their desktop and launch an application that will allow them to do their business directly no browser required. The software is part of a growing number of technologies that aim to make the transition between the on and offline worlds seamless.