Knowing when to not use AIR

Posted September 14, 2007 3:58 pm
Filed under: AIR, Application Design, Articles to remember, Elsewhere on the web, Flex, User-centered design, Web Browsers

Simplified Chaos has an insightful article about deciding when to use AIR and when to stick to browser-based Flash/Flex. His recommendation is to use the browser by default, and only move to AIR if you really need that desktop functionality. His reasoning, which I can agree with, is that people are much less likely to try out a desktop app that they have to install (and probably uninstall later) than to just look at something in a browser. I definitely agree — I hadn’t really realized it until reading this, but I’ve noticed that when I hear about a new AIR app then I always hope the web site has some screenshots or videos of the app in action, so that I don’t have to install it to try it out.

Keith Peters wrote a similar post on the same topic, which I also recommend.

(via Jesse Warden)

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