10 Adobe AIR Apps for Web Designers
Adobe AIR – a cross-platform runtime environment for rich-internet and desktop applications – is just starting to get popular outside of the early-adopter circles, but there’s already a growing amount of tools and utilities that can help web designers with various design-related and managerial tasks.
If you’re a web designer that’s into experimenting and trying out new applications (they don’t cost a dime), check out these 10 Adobe AIR applications perfect for web designers. Graphics designers, interaction designers, and web developers might also find this collection useful.
Em Calculator
The Em Calculator created by James Whittaker is based on an article on 24 ways entitled Compose to a Vertical Rhythm. It’s a pain-free way of creating CSS code for typography set on a baseline style, allowing the design to maintain its typographic proportions (i.e. size, line height, margin, padding) when the web page is viewed at a different font sizes.
colorPicker
colorPicker is a simple desktop application for determining hexadecimal values of web-safe colors. colorPicker saves colors you’ve used during the session so you can quickly refer back to it. If a web-safe color isn’t quite what you’re looking for, there’s an option for adjusting the selected color’s RGB values.
AIR Icon Generator
The AIR Icon Generator is for designers needing a quick icon/web 2.0 badge created. Using the tool is a easy as pie: enter the text you want to display, choose the icon you want to generate (there’s currently only two styles available) and the color, press "generate icon" and you’re good to go. The output provides four different sizes of the generated icon.
Google Analytics Reporting Suite
The Google Analytics Reporting Suite brings Google’s powerful website analytics tool to the desktop and adds several nifty features such as the ability to save/switch between different profiles (excellent for managing multiple sites/accounts for clients) and tab-based navigation for statistics pages you’ve opened.
Shrink O’Matic
We’ve all had to resize a batch of images at some point – thumbnails for image galleries comes to mind. If you’re looking for a quick-and-easy, free application – check out Shrink O’Matic. Set your desired options/parameters (Output size, Output name, Output format) and then drag your images into the interface (or use the file browser), and you’re done!
WebSnapshot
There are plenty of situations where you need to take a screen shot of a live site; maybe you’re documenting or collecting websites for your portfolio. WebSnapshot is a hassle-free tool to accomplish just that. You have the option to capture thumbnails, full page (entire width and length of the page), and/or the browser contents of live websites. As an alternative, try out WebKut, which has similar functions.
kuler desktop
The kuler desktop brings Adobe’s color theme web application to the desktop. Additionally, kuler desktop allows you to import color themes directly into Adobe software applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Be sure to check out Color Browser to help you organize and save color schemes locally from kuler and COLOURlovers.
pixus
pixus is a pixel-based ruler for objects on your screen/monitor. It has skins for Internet Explorer 6 and Safari so that you can visualize how a design or object looks in a web browser. pixus allows you to save preset dimensions for later use.
Klok
Klok is a nifty, robust project time-tracking tool. Klok comes with pre-defined templates including Web Project geared specifically for web designers and developers.
Snippely
If you’ve worked as a web designer for while, you’ve probably amassed a big list of bookmarks and code snipplets that you frequently use. Snippley is an application for organizing and managing your code snipplets within an intuitive interface and centralized location.
I hope you found this collection of tools helpful. If you did, you may also be interested in reading Web-Based Tools for Optimizing, Formatting and Checking CSS and 20 Useful Tools to Make Web Development More Efficient.
Did I miss your favorite? Have any experiences with these applications? Drop your inputs in the comments.
34 Comments
RefreshingApps
August 19th, 2008
You can checkout more Adobe AIR apps over at http://RefreshingApps.com.
Submit your apps, vote and comment on your favorites.
Flavio Copes
August 19th, 2008
I really liked Klok and Snippely, 2 great time-saving tools! Thanks for listing them!
Daniel
August 19th, 2008
WOW, these are great thanks i never actually knew so many exsisted.
Karl
August 19th, 2008
I was just wondering by reading about Snipperly… Is there some useful site somewhere online working like a snipplet wiki something like a huge public snipplet repository? I know Snipplr.com but that doesnt suffice my needs unfortunately
Brian Swartzfager
August 19th, 2008
I was shocked to see my colorPicker app in this list (especially considering how simple it is compared to some of the other apps listed). Thanks for the mention!
Charliend
August 19th, 2008
Some of them will be really really useful! Thanks a lot.
Alfio Raymond
August 19th, 2008
CFDocs is great air app that lets me access ColdFusion syntax faster than accessing it online.
Lamin Barrow
August 19th, 2008
I have been using kuler desktop from adobe for a while but i have never come across any of these before. I will be sue check em’ out. Thanks for the post.
Umut
August 19th, 2008
Great list.
I used most of them, using kuler & snippely daily but heard of pixus the irst time & seem something I need.
Thanks for this great resources.
Jacob Gube
August 19th, 2008
@Karl: There’s several code snipplet repositories around. If you’re looking for user-submitted snipplets, check out DevSnipplets. There’s also Ajax Rain for JS/DHTML code. Hope those help a bit.
Karl
August 19th, 2008
@Jacob
Thanks mate! I’m actually looking for a rather Acionscript oriented Snippet base, but DevSnippets looks nice, since CSS is one of the disciplines I often work in.
Thanks!
Jacob Gube
August 19th, 2008
@Karl: Glad to help – if you find a nice AS-oriented snipplet repository, let me know or maybe we can persuade Noura on DevSnipplets to add a Flash category! :)
Jake Strawn
August 19th, 2008
This is indeed a very nice list… there are at least 2 or 3 right off that I think I’ll try out to see if they can help my workflow!
Thanks for the information!
Martin
August 19th, 2008
All those AIR apps are great once you already have a precise plan what you want. If you are still in the phase of makeing concepts and mockups, the app “Balsamiq MockUps” might help. URL: http://www.balsamiq.com/
I tried it out and making scribbles or mockups is a breeze compared to tools like Visio or OmniGraffle I usually use for those tasks.
And hey, I’m not affiliated with that Balsamiq guy.
Dani
August 20th, 2008
Thank you so much for this amazing list!
Roy
August 20th, 2008
My favorite right now is: http://www.balsamiq.com/
a mock up tool for apps and software
NaldzGraphics
August 20th, 2008
thanks for this nice list Jacob.Its very useful
Farid Abdulhadi
August 20th, 2008
Hey Jacob,
Thanks for a nice list. I’ll surely check some of these out.
Aaron Bassett
August 20th, 2008
Great list, I really like Snippely but it has a few issues.
http://blog.3makestuff.com/2008/why-i-hate-snippely/
which I really hope they fix as that would make it an essential app!
Noura Yehia
August 20th, 2008
Thanks Jacob for the mention.
I didn’t think before about adding a Flash Category on Devsnippets before but i think its very interesting idea, since many flash developers are looking for easy to use AS-oriented snippets.
Thanks for the suggestion and will sure add it :)
liam
August 20th, 2008
Impressive collection, wasn’t aware of any of these, really loving that Klok app. Thanks.
Jacob Gube
August 20th, 2008
@Martin and @Roy: Balsamiq MockUps is great, but I wanted to include full-version free applications. It is worth a mention though and the author of the application says to email him if you want to get a license, and depending on what you’ll be doing with it, you may get one.
@Aaron Bassett Thanks for sharing your experiences with Snippley. You’re right, sharing snipplets with other Snippley users would be great!
@Noura Yehia: Congratulations on the successful launch of Devsnipplets!
Thiemo Gillissen
August 20th, 2008
Thanks for the great summary. Very useful apps.
regards
kevin f
August 21st, 2008
@Karl, I haven’t used it personally for a long time, but Krugle was one of the first big names in code search engines. Here’s the link to their search page (includes ActionScript): http://www.krugle.org/kse/files
David Henderson
September 3rd, 2008
These are great. I hope to start using some of these to become more efficient in my work.
Rosie B Arias
September 8th, 2008
I want To learn how to make my own web site can I do this with hands on experience with this program?
Rodrigo Mesquita
March 18th, 2009
Balsamiq, as said before, is a great design tool to mockup GUI. Highly recommended! http://www.balsamiq.com/
Donna
March 25th, 2009
Nice selection, I already use a couple but hadn’t come across all of them. Looks like some great time savers here!
PAULA
April 4th, 2009
Very good!
shiva bandaru
June 21st, 2009
Hey Jacob,
Thanks for a nice AIR apps list.
Orfebre Martin
June 27th, 2009
This is very good!
Jozko
July 8th, 2009
Thank you. I used this favorite icon generator for my own web site. It looks nice.
serko
September 11th, 2010
Thank you.
Good work.
Alex
December 12th, 2010
Hi Jacob, great list!
We are the developers of another AIR app that could be of help to the web design community. It is called Repper and it’s a pattern design tool. You can check it out on our site http://repperpatterns.com/. Hope you like it and think it’s useful enough to include in the list (make that 11 ;) )
Cheers, Alex from studio:ludens
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