I really liked Tim Anderson’s post in response to a Zoho blog post that I’ve seen circulated a lot about why they chose JavaScript vs. Flash. I’ve definitely been guilty of JavaScript vs. Flash debates in the past but I thought Tim did a good job of making all of us look a little silly. In the end it really doesn’t matter what you use, all that matters is whether or not you can provide a better experience for your users.
Tim compares the design decisions (not technology) behind Buzzword and Zoho and compares and contrasts. As an obvious supporter of Flex and other “plugin” RIA technoogies I thought it was an interesting comparison. To me, those technologies make the desktop metaphor much easier to implement in the browser. I don’t think it’s an accident that Zoho and Buzzword have such different design goals or that Flex applications generally tend to look more sophisticated than Ajax applications. Another aspect is that you’re focused less on having to make your application cross platform so you can spend more of that time on design and usability. There are still some issues with designing in Flex but we know that and Thermo will go a long way towards improving the workflow. Then you can get back to focusing on usability and productivity.
[tags]Flash, Flex, Ajax, Zoho, Buzzword[/tags]
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