Review: Enjoy slick Web apps on your desktop with Cubiez - howellproself

At a Coup d'oeil

Expert's Military rank

Pros

User interface and apps are fast and responsive
Makes various tools and games Sir Thomas More accessible

Cons

Doesn't have many apps heretofore
No sleep Oregon collapse option

Our Verdict

Cubiez is fun to use and wish get even better. It's worth a try.

Web apps are great when you'atomic number 75 happening your PC, merely they require a browser. Mobile apps, on the other hand, take nothing but a smartphone, merely are not very convenient to practice while working happening your computer. So why choose? A new platform titled Cubiez (presently in public beta) offers the record-breaking of both worlds: Light and responsive apps that feel almost suchlike waterborne ones, put on't require a browse, and run for on your calculator. Very similar to the better-known Pokki, Cubiez is an online market for apps through which you install and so scarper a variety of apps.

Cubiez's app icons sit in your tray—the more apps you install the much icons you have.

Cubiez is fairly new in its field, and therefore doesn't offer many apps still. While its biggest rival Pokki includes hundreds of different apps, Cubiez has only a few dozen at the moment. There's no way to scene Cubiez apps online, but you stool check them all out by installment Cubiez and clicking on its taskbar picture. You can consider each available apps, only new apps, or apps you have installed. There is none way to view apps by category, but since not many apps are available, this doesn't fix much of a difference.

Cubiez sits on the leftmost side of your taskbar—right next to the Start button (if you still have combined)—and each app you set u adds an icon on the taskbar as well. This is nice at the start, but when you've installed seven apps, it starts to get crowded, and there's no way to put option Cubiez to sleep or collapse all the icons into one and only. Installing apps is a breeze: After choosing an app from the marketplace and clicking the install push, you fanny't even count to five before the app is installed and available for use. Cubiez and its apps are all highly responsive, and there were no unexplained lags, languor or unresponsiveness in any that I've dependable.

Installing apps takes virtually seconds, and only extraordinary click.

Of all the apps Cubiez offers, about half are games. Among these, you'll find some big names such As Kingdom Rush, Little Chemistry, and Plants vs. Zombies, some classics such as Pacman, and some super-habit-forming ones so much as Unicorn Robot Attack. Digression from games, you'll find profitable apps such as Calculator, Facebook, Google Maps, Google Search, NewsHub (an RSS proofreader), and Weather. If you're looking a specific app, you can use the look box to find it quickly, only note that search strings are case sensitive, so searching for "facebook" will production no results. The apps all extend in a small window that can be affected around the block out, but cannot be resized.

Looking closely at more or less of the apps, I found that while they're all generally good, some are hush up somewhat lacking in features. The Facebook app, for example, is a great take on a Facebook client, with a News program Feed, birthdays and events calendar, a photos lozenge, an inbox, and a notification area. Some actions, so much arsenic comments and likes, can be done straight from the app, while others, such as writing a message operating room viewing a friend's profile, send you to your browser. The app even includes badge and nonclassical-up notifications, but it doesn't manage to freshen up properly, and keeps showing older updates when there are in point of fact newer ones to be seen. The Weather app can only show one location at a time and doesn't let you save locations, and the RSS proofreader includes a tiny number of publications, which, combined with an inaccurate search feature, forces you to move in the exact flow URL for near any website you require to add.

The Facebook app for Cubiez is convenient and useful, when information technology updates properly.

These problems are in the nonage, though, and most of the Cubiez apps are a pleasure to apply. The games, especially, are a very overnice combining between Web-supported games, mobile games, and PC games, and literally give you the best of all worlds: instant, browser-less play. But don't allow the browser-fewer apps fool you: All Cubiez apps, even games, require an Internet connection in order to work, and when one International Relations and Security Network't available, most leave not deliver any error, but will simply fail to load.

Considering its genus Beta condition, Cubiez is a very impressive take on the fairly new world of HTML5 desktop apps, and is unfastened to developers who want to add apps of their personal. It's static missing also many big names to be really useful, but more apps, raw features, and some polishing, will surely change state it into something we would all want to cause on our computer—even out faster get at to productiveness tools, info, social networks, and amusement.

Note: By default, Cubiez's installer also includes a browser minimal brain dysfunction-happening called Cubiez Shopping Buddy. Despite the unfortunate name, this is a legitimate shopping add-on, and is one of the company's taxation streams. You can easily choose taboo of installing it. If you choose to install it and so change your mind, uninstall IT direct the control panel. The Download button on the Intersection Information page takes you to the trafficker's site, where you stern download the latest translation of the software.