(Over)Eating Your Own Dog Food

You may or may not have noticed that Macromedia.com has undergone a major redesign recently, one that assigns at least some reality to Macromedia's vision of rich internet applications (or RIAs) being the future of web design and development. But after examining the parts of the site that best exhibit Macromedia's direction, one can't help but ponder what the ultimate value is for web users.

Let me preface my comments by saying a couple of things. First, I would absolutely love it if Macromedia were to be wildly successful with their RIA push. I've made numerous declarations of my affection for Flash MX (as sick a thought as that is) as an indispensable tool for online, offline, and even video projects, and I make a decent chunk of my living designing in and for Flash. So from a professional and financial standpoint, I'd like nothing better than to have this whole Flash-as-front-end-to-web-applications thing take off like a rocket. Second, when all is said and done, I don't consider myself in any way, shape or form a web developer, so I'm not going to speak to the "under-the-hood" stuff that's going on at Macromedia.com; rather, I'm trying to approach the whole thing from your average, everyday web user. After all, I feel the designer's job (and developer's, for that matter), in any situation, is to make the user's experience as smooth and enjoyable as possible.

I don't think that Macromedia is unaware that convincing their customers to wholeheartedly adopt the "Flash everywhere" vision is, at best, a tough sell. That's not to say that Macromedia is having a hard time moving product in general, as sales of the MX line have been very brisk since their respective introductions, and for good reason (they're excellent products, in my opinion, though I realize some may feel differently). It's just that to get users to take the leap and start creating entire dynamic sites using Flash exclusively on the front end might take more than a little persuasion, and I get the feeling that while the canned examples like the auto parts and pet food RIAs were nice little proof-of-concept applications, Macromedia had to chow down on a little more of their own own dog food to really show the potential of what they saw for the web.

It's because of this that Macromedia should be commended. They clearly believe in their products, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say that the RIA push is a "bet the company" move on their part, they obviously realize that they're going to have to take the reins themselves in order to spur designer and developer buy-in (and how's that for two horse references in the same sentence, huh?). Macromedia should also be praised for making the redesign process an open one, actively soliciting user feedback and publishing an ongoing, relatively candid "Beta Report" that is prominently featured on the home page. While Macromedia makes no bones about the fact that the redesign is very much a work in process, its clear that they are moving the site towards what they've already done to the four main RIA sections, which include product registration, downloads, membership, and Macromedia Exchange. If you haven't seen any of these in action, go ahead and click one of the links. I'll wait here—I'm a patient guy.

Now that you're back from your little field trip and we've all got a common frame of reference, let me offer a few high-level comments. I figure you fall into one of two camps. The first group is probably a little (or a lot) miffed at this point, as you weren't able to use the site at all. Whether you received an incompatible browser notice, didn't have the latest Flash 6 plug-in, or everything seemed to be going OK right up until the point that the app sputtered and stalled while retrieving data, you couldn't even get at the content housed within whatever RIA you chose to visit. The second group probably had everything you needed, were able to play around, and I'm sure have a whole spectrum of varying opinions about what you just saw.

My $.02? From a general perspective, I like all of these apps. Without getting too Jakob Nielsen-y on you and nitpicking every interface element to death, there are some Good Things (copyright 2003, Martha Stewart) happening here. The look is very clean and remarkably uncluttered, considering the depth and breadth of content. You can get to a surprising amount of "stuff" with a bare minimum of mouse clicks. The browser's back button generally works as you'd expect. Junk like that. But when I took off my Flash designer's hat and stopped marveling at the complexity of just what was being done with Flash, the following question invariably surfaced:

Why?

Why is it necessary, or even desirable, to present a pretty vital subset of Macromedia's content entirely in Flash? Is there some urgent need to use Flash here? Is there something inherently wrong with existing, non-proprietary web technologies for this purpose? As cool a technical feat as these RIAs are, I happen to think that using Flash to approximate processes and objects that exist "in the wild" of established web technologies (which I'll call "casual Flash") may create a backlash that could turn web users off to the technology, not to mention having the potential to alienate the very designers and developers Macromedia is attempting to court.

There are two big reasons that, until fixed or at least addressed, all this casual Flash may turn a lot of people off. Reason number one has to do with that first group I arbitrarily lumped together earlier (the group that couldn't even get to the affected areas of the site for whatever reason). You have to have a supported browser and the latest (as of this writing) revision of the Flash 6 plug-in to use Macromedia's RIAs. I really don't think that I have to go into why this is a potential area for user frustration. The second reason is that even if everything is working perfectly, the RIAs don't behave like other sites. Scrollbars don't work with mouse scroll wheels. Pulldown menus don't act like browser-native menus. Interface widgets appear very different from what the containing browser window shows. It's nothing more than an approximation of familiar processes, which look and behave just differently enough to be, frankly, annoying. This behavior disparity is only magnified, at least to me, when contrasted with the other parts of Macromedia.com that mainly rely on regular ol' HTML (much of it dynamically generated, to be sure, but still perfectly good HTML), or a mix of HTML and Flash. Of course, there are probably very valid enhancements Flash offers in this context (the reduction of mouse clicks springs immediately to mind), but are these enhancements enough to counter blowing away the conventions that have become entrenched to web users over the years? My considerable gut tells me it's not worth it, at least not yet.

Don't get me wrong—I love Flash, as I mentioned at least once, and possibly several times, earlier in this piece. But I only love Flash when it's used properly. There are probably as many ideas as to the "proper" use of Flash as there are readers of this column, but here's my take. For me, Flash is best used to create (and sorry for the upcoming Dilbert-ism) value-added components of largely "regular" HTML-based sites. A game. A quiz. A product demonstration. An interactive menu (provided that Flash isn't the only way to access the links). Flash can also be very good at building entire sites like Macromedia wants you to, but on a somewhat smaller scale. Flash is excellent for "brochureware" sites, where the content is purely informative and not really meant for further end-user manipulation (like printing text or saving files to disk). It's also great for portfolio, artistic, experimental, and other creative sites. But for my money, entire Flash sites akin to Macromedia.com, where content is king and users are looking to find, save, and interact with information in a very specific way, strikes me as overkill at best, and a horrible ambassador for widespread Flash adoption at worst.

I realize that this just a single take in a potentially highly-charged debate, so I want to know what you think. Are the RIAs on the new Macromedia.com a good use or a bad use of Flash? Do the RIAs show potential, but aren't quite there yet? Does their existence make you more likely or less likely to develop these kinds of apps in Flash? I'll compile some of the better arguments into a follow-up column, so please use the email link at the top of this page and sound off!

Filed under: Opinion on April 22nd, 2003

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