I’d been hearing quite a bit about Adobe’s Air over the last few months, but I hadn’t had any reason to install it.
While I use a Mac running OSX in the office, I tend to spend more time using my Ubuntu desktop when I’m at home. I may have a MacBook Pro, but sitting at a desk is more comfortable if you’re working on anything that matters.
Since I seem to spend a lot of time and money trawling eBay for bargains I was looking for some “helper” applications. Stewart pointed me in the direction of eBay’s homegrown Air app – the eBay desktop
Unlike Microsoft’s much vaunted “cross platform” Sliverlight which still isn’t available for linux, Adobe have released a linux version. They describe it as “alpha quality” but it actually worked first time.
Installing the eBay desktop application was as simple as downloading the installer and running it. Once installed you’re prompted for your eBay login details and off you go.
Now why can’t Microsoft do something similar with SilverLight? I thought they’d got over their entire “Linux is evil” trip.
From Conor O'Neill:
I’m using AIR on Ubunti for Twibble. It works well apart from one piece of total stupidity – it hijacks the ZIP and ODT file extensions (and possibly others). It looks like a bug rather than bad intentions, but bloody annoying all the same!
From Michele Neylon:
Isn’t that for phones?
From Conor O'Neill:
Twibble is available for N95 and AIR.
From Mark Brislane:
Silverlight for Linux is called Moonlight – http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight – an official colabaration (sp?) between Microsoft and Novell.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/sep07/09-04SilverlightPR.mspx
From Michele Neylon:
@Conor – Ah. I wasn’t aware that it ran on desktops as well
@Mark – Ok, but why do M$ keep referring to Silverlight as cross-platform when it obviously isn’t?