Adobe® AIR™ Bible

Chapter 19. Polishing a Finished Application

When you reach the end of a long project, the same thing almost always happens: Things get hectic. If people are finding a lot of bugs, then you will be in a rush to fix them. If people aren't finding any bugs, then they will probably send lists of features they would like to see added. After all, no application is ever complete. There are always things it could do a little bit faster, something more that it could do, or some way that it could be improved visually.

When you get to this part of a project, you should be focused on the polish of the application. Polish can be split into two general categories: design and usability.

The design of an application is, of course, how it looks and includes:

• Typography

• Colors

• Layout

Usability describes how it works for the user and includes:

• Readability

• Reliability

• Versatility

As the programmer, it is easy to forget just how important these things are to an application, especially when there is a deadline approaching.

Some last-minute design demands might be the improvement of animations, additional button states, changes to improve typography, or changes to the way things line up. Usability demands will most likely include performance improvements, bug fixes, keyboard shortcut options, language support, or accessibility.

For you, this all amounts to quite a bit of work. It shouldn't be a source of despair though, because the difference you make with this work is the difference between an application and a ...