Okay, lets just tell it like it is: getting a trusted digital certificate for your AIR app is a pain in the rear exhaust port. You have to shell out big bucks, like starting at $300/year. And I don’t even want to get into how it mucks with updates to the application and such.

It wouldn’t be so bad but Adobe put that big red question mark up there on the install screen which gives most people the chills. And I just love the UNRESTRICTED in all caps. Like, hello, ALL APPS ARE UNRESTRICTED.

Suppose you’ve made handy little AIR app that you’re thinking about giving away. I did something like that with pixDIF. It started out as just a little tool that I made for myself to solve a particular problem. And it grew into something that I thought was worth sharing with the developer/designer community at large.

But I’m not going to go through the hassle of getting an AIR Cert and spending $300/year for something I’m giving away. So the question remains, how to garner trust without getting a digital certificate. Easy, just offer your AIR app on a trusted site, like Download.com, the Adobe AIR Marketplace, Softpedia, or a host of other shareware/freeware sites. They actually go through and test your app to make sure it isn’t doing anything malicious. And you don’t have to pay them anything for it.

Softpedia.com added pixDIF to their library – I didn’t even ask them to. And bonus, you get more traffic to your app and back to your blog. Plus they all track download numbers.  I love going to these sites every now and then – okay, every day – to see how many people have downloaded pixDIF. I’m thinking it’s a win-win-win solution.

Oh, and even more, you get these cool looking badges that say, “We testing this app and certify that it’s 100% A-ok.” Which will hopefully assuage the users fears when they see those red question-marks and red X’s that Adobe gave us during the install process.

Oh, wait, they’re not using red because it’s a warning. It’s the Adobe red. Now I get it. Too bad the Adobe logo isn’t green or it would look like this.