Living the Dream

Yahoo Mail

Problem #1.   It’s Yahoo Mail.   Why are you not starting me in my inbox?   Seriously?   Mail.   It’s in the name.   Instead, I have to see an article about what you think I’d rather read, along with a gigantic ad for a car that I won’t buy – all while my inbox is relegated to (literally) second tab status.    No thanks.

Problem #2.   Filters.   I remember trying Yahoo Mail two or three different times over the last seven years – and each time, when I went to create a filter, I was taken to this screen:

I’m going to assume that it hasn’t taken that long to update the interface, and that this message is being shown to me because of the browser I’m using.   If I’m wrong, what do I need to do to see the “tweaked” mail filters option?     Also, the “you are allowed up to 100 filters” message.    Granted, I’ll probably not use more than that (well, I know I won’t with Yahoo Mail, since it’s a forward and forget) but the fact that this is here is an annoyance.    If you’re going to limit me, why not at least hide the fact from me until I hit 80-90 filters instead of reminding me every time I click this option about what you aren’t going to let me do?

Problem #3.     It’s 2010.

LiveMail/Hotmail/MSN Mail/Windows HotLive 7 Series Experience Mail/Bingaling Mail

Problem #1 – We’ve started off ok, in that I’m at least in my inbox – but the huge Verizon ad?    Unobtrusive and targeted I don’t mind.   I get that money makes the world go round and it can’t all be free – but in your face, blinky, flashy, red, I’m already an AT&T customer and this is irrelevant ads don’t do it for me.

Problem #2 – Again with the restrictions.   In this case, it’s actually worse than the Yahoo “100″ filters restriction, because this one doesn’t even make any sense.

Gmail

For me, there’s really no contest.   Gmail is all about minimalist email.   You’re using email to communicate, and the interface is built to allow you to do that quickly and effectively.   It’s sparse, but also full of features.   What you don’t need isn’t shoved in your face – but it’s a click (or keyboard shortcut) away when and if you do need it.    It’s quick, and it allows you immediate access to the most used features.   The archive/search functionality can’t be beat, in my opinion.    Themes allow you to pretty it up, but simple UI controls also allow you to hide or minimize (and in some cases even disable) the features that you’re not often using.

The ads are there – but they’re not obtrusive.   They’ll show up when/if they contextually make sense.     Targeting the ads means better clickthrough for the advertisers, and a better user experience for the user.    Some people aren’t comfortable with the idea that content is being keyword indexed to do ad matching in this contextual way – but frankly, this is less of a concern for me than the completely blown UI experience of the competitors.    It should also be noted that nothing says the competitors aren’t trying to do the same thing – they just haven’t made it work as seamlessly yet (as evidenced by the non-relevant ads I’m being served in the above screenshots).

For me, the choice is clear – Gmail is still unsurpassed in almost every way.   I’m not bound to it – I hope someone comes along and challenges the throne to drive innovation.   As of right now however, the competition doesn’t even appear to be close.

By now you've likely heard loads of coverage about the Apple iPad, and it's positioning in the market as (depending on who you believe) a natural progression of the netbook, or a heretofore nonexistent class of device that is poised to usher in the new era of appliance based computing.

You may have also heard about a few of the shortcomings of the device in it's current form. One of these shortcomings, multitasking, I believe Apple knows has to be addressed in both the iPad and the iPhone. As both devices continue to evolve, I would expect this capability to be pushed out to users with a new generation of hardware.

The other shortcoming that nearly every list includes is the lack of Flash support in the browser. Here, I don't think there's any chance that Apple will ever turn around. They've drawn their line in the sand, and as the initial shock of not having support for such a core web component has worn off, much of the argument for Flash being a core web component has started to lose momentum.

Adobe Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow published a now infamous blog post about the iPad's lack of Flash support that prompted Wired to declare that Adobe had resorted to "playing the porn card" in an effort to put pressure on Apple to revisit their decision.

It's worth noting that Lee has since updated the original post to include the disclaimer that the blog post was his own, and not an official "Adobe" blog.   I would imagine that this update itself was prompted by Lee's own desire for self preservation within Adobe.   Having been a member of the Adobe team for 8 years myself, I can assure you it's not a freewheeling corporate culture.

All this aside, the real issue in play is the continued relevance of Flash on the web, particularly in an HTML5 world, and the desire that Apple has to maintain strict control of their ecosystem.    Let's look at these two issues independently for a few minutes.

Where does Flash fit?

You can remember a time, I'm sure, when the temptation existed to develop content in Flash for the web because it allowed you to eliminate inconsistencies in behavior and display caused by lack of adherence to standards by the major browser vendors.   Like them or not, Microsoft was always the worst offender in this area, choosing to attempt to define their own standards and attempt to "lock in" users once they were hooked.   It's smart business – but horrible for the overall well being of the web.    That's not Microsoft's fault – but rather it's the fault of their customers (corporate customers in particular) who allowed themselves to be sold solutions that offered no vendor independence.    This is the very reason why IE6 still continues to exist today.    There are too many legacy systems deployed in large corporate environments where it's simply not cost effective to migrate away from these non standard solutions.

Now, though, even Microsoft is trying to encourage their customers to move toward standards based technologies and away from IE6.    The continued support of this legacy technology has started to burden the company that once championed it, and it's no longer good business to ignore that there are better solutions available.

Instead, now it's Adobe who is in the position of trying to keep users locked in to a proprietary solution for something that can more easily and effectively be done via video encoding/embedding standards available to any browser that wants to adhere to them.    All without the need of a separate plugin, within the browser itself.     Make no mistake that Adobe sees this as a huge threat to the dominance that Flash has enjoyed in the "video on the web" space for so long, at a time when "video on the web as a replacement for traditional content" as a concept is really just starting to click for the average user.    

Where Adobe has leverage with Flash is (in my opinion) the desktop application space.   Adobe AIR   is a fabulous technology that, through the use of Flash, allows developers to build desktop class applications for deployment across multiple systems, eliminating the need to worry about what client OS is being used.   There is a tremendous built in development community who have spent years developing Flash applications for the web, and there is already solid user familiarity with the technology.    The transition makes sense, and it's one that Adobe would be wise to embrace, and put more marketing muscle behind pushing.    

Apple's Role

For Apple, the motivation behind ignoring Flash on these devices has little to do with being so magnanimous as wanting to champion open standards video on the web.    For Apple, it's the sheer terror of allowing that very same application style development that I just mentioned in to their very closed iPhone/iPad ecosystem.    If you've seen the quality of HTML5 based web applications in mobile safari (see the recently launched Google Voice app as a great example) then you know that Apple already has their hands full fighting off an App Store threat that is going to continue to grow as developers tire of the restrictiveness of the App Store submission process.    Add to this the potential of increasing that rouge developer base AND providing access to essentially an already built app catalog via Flash and it's easy to see that there's no way it's ever coming to either device.

Where do they go from here?

For Adobe, Flash as a source of video on the web will continue to stick around for a while to come.   It has upwards of 80% of the web video market now, and those kinds of huge numbers are unlikely to take a nosedive quickly.    Still, as Robert Scoble himself illustrated, this shot across the Flash bow by Apple has only served to remind content producers that Flash simply isn't the only game in town (nor even the best game in town) anymore.    Adobe would be wise to start thinking long term about where the platform is headed.    Most technologists would agree that eventually (there would be disagreement on timing, but eventually) the idea of requiring a plugin to play video from your site/source is going to have to go away.    Take video away from Flash, and Flash is still an awesome product – it just needs to be repositioned/reframed to developers.

For Apple, the very real threat of HTML5 is probably going to be a much bigger nightmare for them than the thought of Flash apps running on their devices ever would have been.    Now is the time to start considering opening up the iPhone SDK and removing some of the silly limitations that sandbox apps in and prevent them from doing things like running in the background, so as to offer a compelling reason to developers to want to develop natively for the device.     Eventually, they'll have no choice but to do this if they want to keep that App Store gravy train running.

Ok Adobe friends, tear me apart.    Cheers.

Those who know me won’t be surprised to see me expressing again how much I despise Flash as a primary component of site development.    Yes, I worked for Adobe, and yes, Flash is awesome for presentation (and even programming in the UI) when used correctly, but I’ve been shocked to see a number of new sites come online with almost their entire interface built in Flash.

I know that there are many who will disagree, but I would encourage you to ask yourself why it is that you want to use Flash on your site.   Most everything that Flash was traditionally used for a few years ago (slideshows, flashy menu elements, smooth transitioning, etc.) can be accomplished easily with CSS and JS – and in most cases your code will be much easier for the person coming behind you to maintain.

Where I work now, we have an entire department that built their site using a Flash element to present nearly all their content.    They had a gentleman we used to employ build it for them.    He left, and he didn’t leave the .FLAs behind.   That means that, while there are areas of the movie that can be exposed/modified via a decompile and some hacking, by and large their content is what it is.

Secondly, Flash, while not difficult, hasn’t traditionally been a development skill.   It’s more a designer specialty.    It has blurred the lines recently with the addition of Flex and flash based form elements, but for the most part, the whiz-bang bells and whistles are the kind of thing that makes a developer think of all the hours that could have been used to improve application functionality.

Finally, there’s the ever important mobile space, where even on mobile browsers that support Flash, scaling and usability remain an issue.    If you’ve developed your entire site in Flash, and you offer no alternate experience to mobile users, you’re going to be in major trouble in another year or two.    I can remember visiting Columbus a year or so ago and needing to check the hours for the Zoo.    We were out and about, so I hit the Zoo site on my iPhone.    The ENTIRE site was a Flash animation, meaning that I couldn’t get any information without resorting to a search for an alternate site.    That lack of convenience costs companies business each and every day.

I got to thinking about this issue again today when my friend TJ Lawhon of Lawhon Photography related a story to me about a friend of his who hired some student developers to build a website for his business.   The kids did the whole thing in Flash, but skipped town before they were done.    Naturally, the site needs to be finished, but you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who wants to spend their spare time wading through another persons FLA and XML files to repair a half done job.    It frankly not worth the effort.

I’m not saying never use the tool – there are perfectly legitimate reasons to do so – a major one being the integration of video with your site.    I’m just saying, please get over the idea that if it’s in Flash it’s impressive.    It’s really not – I promise.    It’s about the content, content, content.   I know if you’re just getting to the web party you don’t believe me.   That’s ok – everyone starts at that point.   But really – a beautifully done Flash web site won’t make people stick around if the content is terrible.   Start there and work your way up.