Comments on: Flex Website: Pillar Data Systems

By: James Ward

James Ward — Fri, 15 Apr 2005 03:35:35 +0000

I just pushed out some updates to pillardata.com which drastically reduce load time. It’s about 4.5 seconds on my computer. :)

-James

By: James Ward

James Ward — Mon, 11 Apr 2005 21:19:33 +0000

Hi everyone. I posted a lengthy response to all of these concerns / questions. You can see it at: http://www.cflex.net/flexcoders.cfm?Message=msg04866.html Let me know what you all think. And thanks for the feedback! -James

By: Michael Rodriguez

Michael Rodriguez — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 17:13:56 +0000

Hi,

I think your being a little hard Kenny, eh? I mean this is one of the first public websites on Flex, but its not on Flash. I agree it has its weaknesses as you’ve described. BUT, let’s also agree that as far as spurring on RIA development and having sites to show clients these folks are providing a great service.

As previously mentioned, I do agree, there must be something under the covers alla Flex under that login.

Therefore, let me get the developers over here to comment on some of the above concerns and questions and get to the bottom of this.

I for 1 would love to see some screen shots of the behind the scenes app if there is one (blanked out sensitive info. of course).

MROD

By: brandy

brandy — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 22:00:00 +0000

wow you guys took it a lot more seriously then I did, heh. Jesse I am the only nerd who calls it a cookie trail, its actually a breadcrumb trail. Sorry my slang has rubbed off on you, DUDE! :) (revenge is sweet).

By: Kenny Bunch

Kenny Bunch — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 18:44:32 +0000

I think this is a bad example, just because it is poor execution. It’s not bad because of technology per say. Though, I agree that I would probably pick xhtml and css over Flash for this type of site, for several reasons. Flex is good for particular types of solutions, but even those solutions may be bad if poorly executed. However, alot of things Brandy points out are issues with the designs usability and not the technologies, because they could easily translate to the same issues in an html site. She does point out on large technical issue, bookmarking. That one is a big technical challenge. In addition, you have indexing, extremely poor performance, large files, etc.

I don’t think Flash is great for complete sites, but if used it needs to be used intelligently and perform faster and provide more benefits to the user than a standard site does. Its the whole knowledge set of use whatever technology fits the problem, rather than use what technology you want to solve the problem.

In 2000, I had a client I freelanced for that insisted on having a Flash site. So basically, I set up one content system and ran 3 sites, one text, one flash, and one html all of the same system. Each implementation took about 2 hours to actually write. Checkout http://www.madisonkeats.com. You’ll see that the Flash version abides by the usability issues that Brandy points out, it is actually faster to load, and more efficient. I didnt agree that it should exist, but if I was going to make it, it was important to make it just as good or better than the html site. Again, a lot has to do with implementation, so don’t rail on those points. But also I agree that you need to pick the technology that best fits the problem, don’t use it for the sake of using it.