Why doesn't Adobe.com use Flex?
One of the all time most visited links in my blog is: Flex Vs Ajax - Which one is better and why? Interesting comparison though I don't provide an answer to the question since both flex and ajax have their own advantages and are good at them. And so I thought I'll revisit on this topic today.
One of the biggest flex turn offs for me is the way in which adobe promotes it. Pathetic! Since flex is a product of adobe, I've visited adobe.com many times to see what they are doing with flex, but I've always been disappointed because most part of their website still is in web 1.0; no flex nor ajax! Look at these pages: 1) registration page 2) forgot password . Traditional!
Adobe did do a good job at converting their website to coldfusion soon after the acquisition of macromedia. They believe in their product! Wait! Really? Do you think so? Because I don't!!!I did hop in to a fairly decent adobe site, the adobe store. Looks good! The page is in coldfusion and pretty impressive. Do they have a page that is done in flex? (note that the extension for flex is .mxml). They could have done the adobe store in flex at least to showcase the power of flex. For example, the drag and drop shopping cart and all that cinematic stuff that can be done using flex.
Not seeing much of their own products in their website makes me think that they don't believe in their products or that they are planning on discontinuing some of their products.Take Microsoft for example, their website serves as a good example of their products. Also take a look at http://expo.live.com/ Totally .Net Ajax!!!
5 comments:
Hi. I think the Adobe online store team is working away on a Flex version. The store is a pretty huge and mission critical app, so I imagine they are taking their time to get it just right.
It will be interesting to see how Microsoft adopts WPF XBAPs on their core online properties. Have you seen any of those yet?
Jeff Whatcott
Adobe
Hi,
We have a number of Flex apps on our site (seminar registration, etc). Keep in mind, Flex is a programming framework for web *applications*, not for general web pages and site design. We are not trying to solve all problems in the world with Flex.
The Adobe Store will be an all Flex application soon.
Last point, the file extension for Flex applications is not neccesarily MXML. That was true in 1.0 and 1.5, but not one can just compile a .SWF and that is likely all you will ever see as a file extension.
Regards,
David
Adobe
thanks jeff and david for the insight from adobe. this makes me less paranoid about recommending flex to my clients.
any idea when the flex adobe store will be online?
Check out the flash widget at the bottom of the new CS3 pages, see here for example:
http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/
This widget was built entirely in Flex, but is just getting delivered as a swf. Speaking as the designer for that widget, I can say it was nice making design changes in the Flex CSS, as opposed to the Flash movie clip methods.
Look for a Flex cookbook entry about this widget (hopefully) soon.
ROFLOL...!! :D
I see I didn't really HAVE to write my comparison between [Gaia] Ajax and Flex at all actually ;)
Adobe has written it for me :D
.t
Post a Comment