I’ve been playing around with the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for the last week or so, and came up with a little app. It started out as just a test to teach myself the ins and outs of as3 development in Flex Builder and AIR, but I’ve shown it to some friends and they seem to like it. Basically, it lets you easily make widgets out of parts of *almost any web page. You do so by opening “snips” which are little web browsers you can crop down. It’s a simple concept, but it’s surprisingly powerful. I keep finding new uses for them. They also have options like auto refresh, and linking out to your default browser. Obviously, it’s early in development, and it’s built on AIR witch is currently in Beta, so it might behave unexpectedly. If you’re OK with that, go check it out.
*AIR doesn’t support embedded Flash in HTMLComponent yet. I assure you, the irony does not escape me. But Adobe said it will be releasing new versions for this year’s MAX, so I’ll update the app once it’s out.
Great stuff! I’ve been thinking of a similar application myself. Any chance that you’ll share the source with the community or make it available for sale? I can think of a few derivate works I might make based on this outstanding start…
Great tool takes Windows active desktop, which they abandonded by the way, to the next level. One tweek if possible and this will be used all throughout my dept.
Is there any way that Form post can open to another page. You have the link ability but most pages that this would be useful for me are Form post, seaches & lookups.
Also the refresh will this work for logged accounts. I have 2-3 sites that boot you after 5 mins which really annoys me will the refresh keep that from happening, FYI if I keep refreshing in browser of these sites it will keep me logged in.
Final ask Mutliple Snips in one page with tabs or slides. This way I can have one Snippage with all 5 of the sites that I search at work for instance.
Thanks Amador,
1) Currently, only GET forms are supported for external linking. Forcing POST forms to open in external windows is a bit trickier but I’ll look into it.
2) I set the shortest refresh timer to 10 min because I didn’t want people using this app to hammer on sites. But I guess there’s plenty of other ways to do that. I’ll add the 5 min option to the next release.
3) Tabbed or multi-page snips kinda go against the “At a Glance” functionality I was originally going for with Snippage. But I feel your pain. My desktop is currently covered with snips so I might need to come up with some way of managing them. Maybe a snip docking system?
Been a fan for years. Great work!
great AIR tool, but has a small shortage:
it can not keep the specific section(such as the middle part of large page) while refreshed automaticlly. Instead ,the cliped widget just show the top section of the page.
Did i miss something?
Hi, firstly, it’s great AIR app, congrats. Next, i got 1 bug report… when you set your “snippet” with scollbars usage (use scrollbars to find you area), after refresh positions of scrollbars are not remembered. it refresh area but scrollbars position is 0 (page is in 0,0 pos) I hope you know what I mean
Once more, great app Gabo
hi,
this app looks awesome. fyi, i just tried installing it with the new air beta (posted on labs today) and it generates this error message:
This application requires a version of Adobe AIR which is no longer supported. Please contact the application author for an updated version.
I was intrested in researching this tool and you plug-in but when I went to install System Access: lists as unrestricted: This application may access your file system and the internet, which may put your computer at risk.
I work internet security for a living and this level of access is concerning. I’ve been trying to find if there are any tools to change this security concern?
Wow…very nice program. You never cease to amzze us. Keep up the great work. The only tweak I would add to this program is to lock the scrollbars in please once a snipet is made. The problem I have had is that some pages auto-refresh and scroll to the top of the page instead of leaving the snipet where I orginally placed it. Otherwise amazing man…Thanks for the great tool.
Just posting this to reiterate Liwenzhi’s and Franto’s comments before me. I just would like to know when this is going to be fixed or if ever…:) Great tool btw! Love it.
Thanks everybody ^_^.
I am aware of the scroll bug and I’ll try to get it fixed as soon as I have some time. Probably around the beginning of next week. Next, I’ll try to add some new features I’ve had in my head for a while. Might even change the layout a bit. I don’t really want to complicate the app too much by adding stuff as it’s simplicity is a big part of it’s appeal.
@TekQ: I’d think any AIR app would cause these security issues. I’m not familiar with System Access, so I can’t say what it’s testing methodology is, but Snippage does access the internet (obviously) and it does save configuration files in your local machine. Regardless, both Snippage and AIR are beta applications and I would not recommend installing either of them in an critical or sensitive environment.
@Gabo re TekQ
It is indeed something you will see with any AIR based application install. The message is deliberately slightly scary - this is a desktop application you are installing, and so is not constrained by the same security sandbox model that is apparent in browser based Flash Player content. The warning is there to make that explicit. As with *any* desktop application, if you don;t trust the publisher, don’t install it. Application built on AIR *are* potentially malicious, or rather, if the auther were malicious, they would be able to compromise your security. Hence also the ability to have the application signed by a certificate from VerisSign.
Best
Pete
Hi,
snippage is really great but it’s not working with deezer.com, is there a way to fix that ?
cheers,
Alex
I made some snippets, and saved those to the desktop as a .snipset file.
I assumed when I double-clicked that, the snips would be opened.
However, I am getting the default Snippage brown screen, am I missing something?
I would not want to reconfigure snips every time I start the snippage app, and for a number of reasons, i do not want the snippage app running continuously on my desk.
Raj
Hello Just provide me how can make a desktop widget?
Awesome app! however, you can’t run it if you’re running AIR beta 3 (released Dec 2007). Do you have an updated version of it for B3?
Great jobe done! Congratulations!
Some issues:
When i request the update to 10 minutes or any other time, during the refresh it opens a insntance of firefox the same way.
Always open the firefox browser every refresh…
Something you can tell about that, theres a way to fix it?
btw: gooooood job!
Is there a new release planed? With air 1.0 I can’t install it.
Doesn’t work (doesn’t refresh forum’s pages)
very nice.
I would like to be able to Name my snipps.
thanks
ps: do you still have that old very nice flash interface site full of rotating circles accessibly in some link?
Excellent application. However, I’m experiencing problems with cyrillic encoding.