[thelist] Macromedia.com redesigned

Paul Bennett paul at teltest.com
Wed Mar 5 18:33:02 CST 2003


Erik Mattheis wrote:

> My first impulse was to suggest people peruse thelist archives and just
> pretend we had this thread again with the words shuffled around a bit
> ... and that I thought MM was lame for not doing their new home page in
> PDF format ...

now *there's* an idea ;)

> but against my better judgment, I am not passing up on
> the opportunity to have some fun  ...

good man

> The Pros have exhausted their desire to rehabilitate the Cons

"Rehabilitate : To restore to good condition, operation, or capacity."
That seems to be what we are trying to do to the MM homepage to me.

> Before
> Flash MX, the Cons criticized the Pros for departing from standard
> browser GUI elements. Now the Cons are criticizing the Pros for
> emulating standard browser GUI elements in Flash. As the Con's "limited
> audience" arguments become weaker, they continue to parade out arcane
> devices that can access the Internet but not Flash.

As a wireless developer, I can assure you that "arcane" is no solid
reference to the multitudes of handeld  / mobile devices that can and
will rely upon *well formed XHTML or xml* to display information. The
mental picture we seem to have of every user accessing the internet via
their Windows 2000 powered PC with a cable connection and IE6 with the
latest (this weeks) version of the Falsh player needs to change.
The point is also that some of us (a he11 of a lot of people that I
know) want to simply have the *option* not to be beaten with the Falsh
stick. MM have done this, albeit in a roundabout way.

>
> Yeah, the teeming hordes of blind wanna be web developers with
> incompatible screen readers that happen to look into buying software
> while MM's home page is in beta,

If it is such a solid idea, why did they have to slap a "beta" tag on
it. Might as well have stuck in there:  "Even *we* aren't quite sure if
this is a good idea or not".
Yes, lets alienate:
(1) Blind / Visually impaired people
(2) Users of any other OS other than Windows

> and Linux freaks too cantankerous to
> bother rolling over to a computer set up similarly to 99.9%

where the he11 did this figure come from? Your Flash dev support group?

> of the
> Internet's population before they start spewing off That. They've.
> Made. Up. Their. Minds. And. Everyone. Who's. Ideas. Are. Different.
> Than. Theirs. Is. Wrong. Period.

NO.
This is *so*
Not.
The.
Point.

The (public) internet was established to connect different networks on a
common protocol and allow the easy and common sharing of information and
ideas. Requiring users to have a proprietary (albeit free) plugin to
access even portions of that information is not only contrary to the
ideology of what the internet is, but also (as we have seen) alienates a
proportion (however "small" it is) of the internet population. If I was
a business like MM,  I would certainly like my message to reach as
*great* a proportion of that community as possible. This current design
hampers them from doing so, and also gives the inference (as do many the
Flash proponents on theList who have been replying) that people who
don't / can't / don't want to see it *don't matter*.

>> If Macromedia itself can't disprove the point, what the hell
>> chance does it have of convincing the rest of us to try?
>
>
> The point being that you're not interested in become a Flash developer,
> of course.

No this is not the point, the point is: (See my point above)

--
 ------------------------------
	Paul Bennett
	Internet Developer
	Teltest Electronic Design
 ------------------------------
Email: paul at teltest.com
Phone: 64 4 237 4557
Web: http://www.teltest.com
Wap: http://wap.teltest.com





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