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I’m Officially Off the Flex Bandwagon

Nathan Voxland November 15, 2008 Ajax, Interface Design No Comments

For the last year I have been a big Flex proponent.  There are a lot of things I really like about it, I have come to the realization that it should only play a minor role in favor of standard HTML and AJAX.

Pros Of Flex compared to AJAX

  • Cross-browser compatibility
  • Naively Object Oriented
  • Data binding
  • Nice built-in controls (tables, trees, tabs, charts)
  • Ability to write modular controls

What I am starting to find

  • Debugging sucks.  I don’t think there is going to be a way around it for our application.  In both Flex Builder and InteliJ, the debugger expects to be given a .swf file to run, … Continue Reading

Talking Smoke Detectors

Nathan Voxland November 05, 2008 Interface Design No Comments

I was at the local home improvement store the other day and saw a “talking smoke detector”. The idea behind it is that instead of a loud beeping alarm when it senses smoke, it actually says “Fire! Fire!”.

My In-Store Reaction

It reminded me of many user interface decisions I see: something that is done because you can and because it is fun to do, but in the end is a waste of time and effort. My guess was that someone at the smoke detector manufacturer said “hey, … Continue Reading