Raising the stakes with eBay's Flash-y new tool
Posted 31 October 2007 at 8:44AM by Simon Dickson in Doing business online
I'm getting excited about Flash again. YouTube-style video gave Flash a (much-needed?) shot in the arm, in terms of enriching the web experience. As we mentioned the other week, Adobe is getting into the online applications business, with its Buzzword online word processor a truly beautiful thing to behold. And a few months after its initial public release, we're starting to see the first real-world uses of Adobe's new AIR technology, which brings Flash-y interfaces to the desktop.
AIR describes itself as 'a cross-operating system application runtime that allows developers to use HTML/CSS, Ajax, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex to extend rich Internet applications to the desktop.' In practice, this means a new generation of web-style software applications, installed on your desktop machine, and interacting with the web. Because it's based on agnostic technologies, this means AIR applications should work on all systems - Windows and Mac initially, with Linux coming soon after.
But perhaps the most exciting part is that through the integration of Flash, it brings graphic designers into the world of software development. All the cool visual tricks you can do with Flash, you could soon be seeing in traditionally boring office applications. It isn't going to make it any more exciting to fill in your expenses claim; but don't underestimate the potential impact of a prettier user interface.
The first proper application I've seen is eBay Desktop - and although I've never been a big eBay fan, I can see how regulars will love it. The initial 'dashboard' screen shows all your need-to-know stuff - items you're watching or bidding on, a scrolling view of eBay's category structure, recent and favourite searches. Pretty soon you'll be at a familiar listing screen, with everything as you'd expect it... but just looking so much, well, Flash-ier.
This is the web the way you always imagined it would look. Lots of animations and transitions, full choice of fonts and layout tricks... although I can't help thinking the animating second-by-second countdown clocks are a bit much. The only catch is that it's only the US eBay site for now - but it's still in beta testing, and eBay is usually pretty good at rolling these things out more widely when they're ready.
The showcase area on Adobe's website is a little light on other examples. There's an unofficial tool for Google Analytics, and a very nice Twitter client, plus a few Adobe-built samples, some of which are a bit rough round the edges. But these are very early days, and the potential is truly huge.
Tags: adobe, AIR, ebay, flash, twitter
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Comments
2. At October 31, 2007 10:53 AM, anjanesh wrote:
AIR vs Silverlight vs embedded flash vs Curl
this could only get more interesting
3. At October 31, 2007 1:17 PM, Howard Finkel wrote:
Anjanesh, your comment looks more like one of them world wide wrestling federation matches!
4. At October 31, 2007 1:36 PM, Oswald wrote:
you're right, nothing could be more interesting
5. At November 1, 2007 4:35 PM, anjanesh wrote:
now that you have mentioned it Finkel ..it does seem to be so :-)
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1. At October 31, 2007 9:34 AM, Eric Baker wrote: