FlexBuilder 3: The First Thing You See
After experiencing some minor FlexBuilder 3 installation troubles (my fault) I finally got a little time to fire-up FlexBuilder and check it out.
My first impression was that it looked pretty slick, the layout seemed coherent and I wasn’t seeing loads of useless screen space. That’s good. I poked around a little, plopped some components on the stage, toggled between Design and Code view to see how one affected the other, and generally clicked on any tab or panel I could find. Neato.
After letting my mouse roam all over FlexBuilder 3 like a teenager’s hands on a prom date I decided to try a slightly more refined approach to getting acquainted.
As you can see from this screen capture, the first thing Adobe’s ‘Welcome Screen’ suggests you do is view this Introductory ‘Video’.
After visiting that page, my first thought is that FlexBuilder wasn’t available to whoever created that particular… shall we say “Rich Internet Application”. Rich Internet Application? Hmmmm. RIA? I seem to have heard that term somewhere before… Oh yeah, that’s right I’ve heard it from Adobe about a million times. Adobe drops the phrase “RIA” every chance they get, so it seems odd that the RIA responsible for introducing all new users to the FlexBuilder’s RIA experience is such a PIA (Poor Internet Application).
The SWF on Adobe’s Intro to FlexBuilder page suffers from all the things that make Jacob Nielsen cry. The interface doesn’t look anything like an interface. If you miss the one navigation element (a non-descript triangle) it’s quite likely that you’ll accidentally navigate away from the SWF presentation altogether using the more prominent and numerous HTML navigation buttons (Go Fred Mertz!).
Adobe misses a great opportunity to use a Flex application to demonstrate what a Flex application can do. Where is all the “Flex Appy” goodness? Adobe talks the RIA talk, but doesn’t walk the RIA walk. Show me how standardized controls make things usable. Show me how quick and easy it is to whip out a Slideshow component that handily navigates a series of SWF files. C’mon man, this is your time to shine. Lead by example.
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