Facebook becomes desktop friendly with two different Adobe AIR clients
Browsing Facebook online is a great, but frequent users may want to consider one of these alternatives.
Facebook is a website that people flock to, but it’s also available for use on the desktop thanks to two clients running on the Adobe AIR platform: Facebook for AIR and Photo Uploader.
Why would you want a desktop client for a website in the first place? Well, in some instances, the desktop version can be a better option. If you’re someone who is constantly on Facebook and browses the web with several tabs open at once, it’s nice to have a separate window to easily see friend feeds or share status updates. Rather than switching to the Facebook.com tab and refreshing the page to see what’s new, a desktop client can be kept as sidebar ready for access at any time (not recommended for the workplace obviously because this can prove very distracting).
Just as Tweetdeck and Twirhl enhance Twitter in ways that the microblogging website has yet to match, Facebook for Adobe AIR and Photo Uploader seek to outperform everyone’s favourite social networking website. While Facebook for Air takes the more minimalist approach with a heavy focus on the news feed, Photo Uploader is the behemoth that seeks to do all things Facebook.
Photo Uploader does everything you can do on Facebook without ever having to visit the website. Get notifications about friend requests and new messages, a mini-mode to always have the feed visible at a glance, and even use Facebook’s chat system. There’s also a Photo Upload feature that is easier to navigate than the online system that Facebook uses to mass-upload photos.
Both Photo Uploader and Facebook for Air need some tweaks to address some problems. Furthermore, people with slow computers or low RAM may want to avoid downloading another program that eats up system resources. However, either one can be something worth taking for a spin if you’re a Facebook addict.
NOTE: When trying to use Facebook for Air for the first time, I got stuck in a rather annoying installation loop. If you experience similar problems on a PC, restarting the computer and reinstalling the app might to do the trick. Mac users who get stuck in the loop will have to wait for a fix from the program’s developers.