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.

My AIR – pixDIF – for helping developers and designers measure pixel distances on their screen, and check for differences between their design comps and implementations is now available at Download.com.  You can read more about it and see a short video overview of the app here.

Addendum

Softpedia.com added pixDIF to their library – I didn’t even ask them to. And they also gave pixDIF a 100% clean rating.

The other day I was putting ads on my blog here and needed to know where they would fit the best. So I found a website that had images for the standard ad sizes and dragged them into pixDIF. I figured that would be a use-case for lots of people so I added all of the standard ad sizes I could find to the “blank windows” menu. Here are the sizes that I’ve added:

[ download pixDIF from the Adobe AIR Marketplace ]

[ view all the features for pixDIF ]

Banner Ads

• 728×90
• 468×60
• 392×72
• 234×60

Skyscraper Ads

• 160×600
• 120×600
• 120×240

Button Ads

• 125×125
• 120×90
• 120×60

Rectangle Ads

• 336×280
• 180×150

Min/Max toggle

As you can see in the image to the right I’ve added a min/max toggle button to the options toolbar. Now when you’re using very narrow images the toolbar won’t stick way out to the right. But you can always open the toolbar back up and make adjustments if you need to.

As always, if you can think of anything to add to pixDIF or notice any bugs please notify me. You can find my contact info in pixDIF via Help > About.

[ download pixDIF from the Adobe AIR Marketplace ]

[ view all the features for pixDIF ]

I’ve created an AIR application to help developers and designers measure pixel distances on their screens. You tell if you need pixDIF if you answer yes to any of these questions:

1. Do you ever find that you need to measure the pixel distance/size of something when you’re not in Photoshop? Or, put another way: do you wish you could take the guides in Photoshop with you to the computer desktop?
2. Do you ever want to know what a graphical asset will look like in the context of a website or application. For instance, do you wish you could take an image and move it around over your website to see what it would like like in various places before you start writing the code to place it there?
3. Do you ever have a website or application design that you need to break up into pieces and build into a working site/app? And then as you write the code you need to see how close to the design you are?

If any of those answers are “yes” then jump over to the pixDIF page and check out the features and overview video tutorial.