From the consumer point of view, it is the same thing. We all want to see what people have built with it and as a result we feel like we want to try out every application we find. The reality is though, you wouldn’t go around installing every VB or Swing app you find online would you? As consumers, we will get past the “that looks cool” phase and into the “that looks like it will solve my problem” phase resulting in less useless downloads.

As developers, we need to make it obvious what an application does so that the consumer can make an informed descision about downloading it. The idea of creating an online trial version that users don’t have to download is a great one. I expect in the (very) near future to offer an online trial version of Klok just for this reason.

There’s been some loose talk of using ColdFusion (since it’s an Adobe product) to deliver “no-touch-deployment” AIR apps (to steal Microsoft’s terminology). CF has text generation (to create HTML and JS dynamically) and now has the CFMXML tag as hooks into the Flex compiler. It just might get to the stage where you have a CF app saying “like this on your desktop? click here” and it dynamically creates an AIR app and downloads it to your desktop.

wishful thinking? perhaps…

You could simply not install an AIR app unless you actually think you want/need to use it. Or if you do install it and don’t like it then uninstall it immediately rather than leaving it until you have 20 apps that you don’t use cluttering up your desktop.

Rather than trying to change the world why not just change your own habits, its much more likely to actually work.

peace.

http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=61

Mike