What is Adobe AIR?

If you haven’t heard of Adobe AIR yet, let me introduce you to this technology provided by Adobe. Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a cross-platform environment that enables you to have your favorite web applications with you all the time. Since applications built for Adobe AIR run on your desktop computer without a web browser, they provide all the convenience of a desktop application. AIR allows existing Flash, Actionscript or HTML and JavaScript code to be used to construct traditional desktop-like programs.

In order to run these applications, you need to first install the Adobe AIR environment in your computer (Just like you install Flash player or JAVA runtimes). You can download the latest version freely here :- Get Adobe AIR

My 10 Favorite Adobe AIR Applications

As I use many of these AIR applications almost everyday, I have made a list of my favorite ones. These are quite handy and I am sure that you will find them useful too. I have made a folder on my desktop where I keep all the shortcuts to my AIR applications. So, here they are :-

• Font Picker :- If you have too many fonts installed on your computer, it can get very hard when you have to choose the right font type for your projects. This AIR tool shows you all the fonts installed on your computer and helps you choose which one is most suitable for a particular project.

• Shrink O’Matic :- Shrink O’Matic is an AIR application to easily (batch) resize (shrink) images. It handles JPGs, GIFs and PNGs. Simply drag and drop images and they’ll be resized as you wish! Options allow you to choose the output sizes, names and formats.

• Imagesizer :- ImageSizer is an application built to resize, optimize and rename a batch of jpg images producing a zip file containing the images. ImageSizer also allows users to resize images that are greater than 2880px by 2800px, however the resized images cannot be greater than this size.

• Pixus :- This is a measurement tool to measure the screen objects in pixels using both mouse and keyboard control. It also lets you preview your design with skins and presets. Too cool!

• Desktop Color Finder :- This nifty little app helps you to search colorlovers.com’s entire database of nearly 1 million named colors and more than 300,00 user created color palettes. Very useful if you are a designer and need to research color schemes. You can even have output based on different object names (just like tags) and the app will give you color themes based on that (for example, the term “forest” will give you all the color schemes related to a forest).

• Polaris :- Polaris is one of the first Adobe AIR applications to be built using the recently released Google Analytics API. With this application, you can track your visitors and all other statistics that is provided by Google Analytics right from your desktop. Very convenient indeed!

• Moderator :- Moderator is a WordPress Plugin and associated desktop application, built using Adobe AIR, that allows you to view and moderate comments from your desktop. This app lets you view unmoderated comments, accept, delete and spam comments and also shows the Gravatar icons for each comment.

• WebSnapshot :- The application is simple but effective, type a URL then take a snapshot using one of the three sizing methods; Thumbnail, Browser or fullpage view. The sizes that are used for each setting are configurable via the preferences menu for both scale and actual pixel sizes.

• Snippely :- Snippely is a basic text and code organizational tool. Instead of storing bits of code, quick notes, and memos in text files all over your hard drive, this application will let you save and organize “snippets” in one convenient location. What is good about Snippely is that it uses a syntax highlighter so you can have more meaningful looking snippets.

• Doominow :- Doominow is a small application that lets you create your own lists of To-Do tasks. The app has been designed from the ground up to stay out of your way and out of your browser. It has all the features you use, and none of the ones you don’t. Create, edit, set reminders, and keep archives of your old tasks.