Flah no longer 99% bad-- maybe only 87%? (was Re: POWERPOINT IS 99% BAD was Re: [Sigia-l] Macromedia and JakobNielsen team up ?

[Ziya Oz]

"christina wodtke" wrote:

> he's ammended it.

"A very important usability improvement is that Flash now ships with a
standard set of interaction controls: finally, no more random scroll bars
made up at the whim of a Flash designer."

This is absurd. He either can't express himself correctly or he just doesn't
quite understand the new components architecture. You can still have any
kind of scroll bar that you'd like. Or take the built-in ones and 're-skin'
them. Etc.

But the problem is deeper than that. One of Nielsen's pet peeves about Flash
was that it introduced GUI paradigms that were beyond what PC users were
accustomed to, thus lowering usability.

What MM is doing with Flash components is precisely that. 99% of *desktop*
users are accustomed to Windows and Mac OS GUI paradigms, because that's
what they use 99% of the time on their PCs. Now, MM is trying to establish
Flash MX GUI environment, in *addition* to the users' daily GUI regiment. In
other words, exposing users to yet another GUI that they have to learn.

MM could invoke the host OS's UI widgets instead of creating an alternative
GUI. For obvious strategic reasons, they chose not to work with the native
OS, but introduce their own in Flash MX.

So, I guess, it's OK to burden users with another GUI, as long as NNG gets
paid to not badmouth it :-)

Best,

Ziya

P.S. I'm happy about the Flash MX components, even though they have a long
way to go.