[thelist] Macromedia.com redesigned

John Dowdell jdowdell at macromedia.com
Wed Mar 5 16:01:09 CST 2003


At 1:32 PM 3/5/3, Mike Migurski wrote:
>>Accessibility: Are you using a particular screen reader? or which sensory
>>modality, in particular, do you wish transformed into which other sensory
>>modality?
>
>no, no, it's fine.
>http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go?q=www.macromedia.com

So are you asking something like "Should the Poodle Predictor of search
engine behavior display the pages it is displaying?" If so, I don't know.

I do know that the site itself is powered by Google, and trust that they
would have advised us if they found all the search results were empty.



For "speed" comments, it definitely has a different rhythm... consider
these navigation models:

--  Static nested page nav: load and render a succession of HTML pages
before landing at target page. Pro: Works in Lynx. Con: Too many server
transactions, redundant instructions.

--  Static flat page nav: classic "site map" page... you're already
familiar with the pro & con on this.

--  Client-side dynamic nested nav: Whether JavaScript or Flash, you can
download all links, then show/hide into the directory on demand. Pro: get
anywhere in the site after only one HTML page. Con: must download links to
all content first; cannot scale to deep navigation.

--  *** Client/server dynamic nested nav ***:  There are two different
implementations of this in the new Macromedia.site. In both only the
top-level of the nav hierarchy is downloaded, and subsequent directories
are XML-transferred on demand. Result: you can navigate deeply through the
site with only small incremental XML loads... no HTML re-send needed at
each level... navigation can go quite deep into the site. Info here:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mmwebsite/articles/info_arch.html

I don't have ready examples of other sites which have used one-screen
navigation deep into the site through incremental loading like this. The
incremental loads can be startling to someone who has experienced only
client-side loads in the past.



At 1:39 PM 3/5/3, Tom Dell'Aringa wrote:
>- Object expected JS error on home page

I don't see that. Are you in a different browser than I am? (Of course,
that's a leading question.... ;-)


>>- I waited 15 seconds on a T1 line for a REGISTRATION page to load.
>>We're talking about a form with 3 fields here.

No, it's not. Check out the section on "accordion forms" in the article I
linked above.



Summary: A web-delivered application has a different *rhythm* than does
delivery of a series of predefined screens.


jd







John Dowdell, Macromedia Developer Support, San Francisco
(Best to reply on-list, to avoid my mighty spam filters!)
Technotes: http://www.macromedia.com/support/search/
Column: http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/jd_forum/
Technical daily diary: http://www.macromedia.com/go/blog_jd





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