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Credit to <a href=”http://www.mediadiva.net”>her majesty</a> for sending me this story.

<a href=”http://news.com.com/2100-1040-976586.html”>http://news.com.com/2100-1040-976586.html</a>

Macromedia <a href=”http://news.com.com/2100-1040-930301.html”>hired</a> Jakob Nielsen awhile ago to help with usabiliy in Flash. However, nothing that I ever heard came of those studies. Today, though, I read this article.

I think this point from the article is very important:
“I think we’re seeing that because it’s easier to do these Web applications, you’re getting people who haven’t done a lot of applications before and may not know much about user interfaces and other elements,” said Nielsen.

It’s fantastic that Macromedia truly has made things easier for people to make the web what they want it to be. And, just like the articles comparison, there is a lot of responsibility in taking a web app project on. By having that ease of creation, it’s important that you understand the usability issues involved in design.

All the more reason to step up efforts educating and helping people like going to speak at more conferences and replying to more emails on the lists.

I just wish that <a href=”http://www.nngroup.com/”>goob and his cronies</a> would hurry up their studies and get <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com”>MM</a> to publish their findings!

<a href=”http://www.actionscripts.org”>ActionScripts.org</a> is hosting a <a href=”http://www.actionscripts.org/press/archives/000183.shtml” target=”_blank”>component contest</a> for a copy of <a href=”http://www.multidmedia.com/software/flashstudio/”>Flash Studio Pro</a>.

<a href=”http://psychlonex.dyndns.org/”>John</a> and I are working on a mod of the FScrollBar to not only emulate Windows XP and Mac OSX, but it will detect which OS your on, and use the appropriate my skins. Still trying to figure out how to do a Linux version; I got Red Hat on my other comp, but no idea how to use it, hehe. I’ll try my damndest to give him the copy of Flash Studio Pro because I just wanna win. However, I think my boss at my work has us both beat…

Someone on the <a href=”http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/”>Flashcoders list</a> had <a href=”http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/ezmlm/ezmlm-cgi/1/66171″ target=”_blank”>posted</a> about having Macromedia make the components they used on their new website available. During the conversation, Scott had mentioned he was trying to get the Windows XP traction piece on the Flash scrollbar. I offered up a solution. Not an end all, be all, but a mod none the less. The file can be downloaded on the left, “<a href=”https://www.jessewarden.com/downloads/Scrollbar%20Traction.zip”>Scrollbar Traction</a>”. Basically, I add another movie clip inside the scrollbar, and position it when the scrollbar changes. I have commented in the code where I added code.