General response to Sean followed by just one last new conceptual request. As was stated in various posts, (and I can only speak for myself on this) kudos and gratitude to you and the entire MM team for your open-ear policy - this is truly heartfelt.
The fact that you've got multiple sources of input and need to consider all (CF,DW, FW, FL and Director) is very understandable from a corporate perspective yet speaks directly to what I believe to be the root cause of the problem. Personally, I feel that CF, being the least visual of the list, has line-coders as the core user base, not designers, most of whom are quite delighted at spending great amounts of time visually experiencing web sites rather than desiring to dive into the meat and potatoes. While I love Flash for all that it is and does, the reality IMHO and from my years of web dev management and client / end user analysis, is that it gets in the way too often regarding serving up cold hard content in those situations where textual content viewing is the most efficient need of the user. The exchange is a perfect example. Flash strips away the end-user options all sorts of ways to Sunday and not only does that slow many of us down, it goes directly against the standardization guidelines most of us strive for in our own work. I will continue to evangelize CF to new developers I meet, and where clients request it Flash as well, however I will ALWAYS put heavy emphasis on the side of standardization, and content is king, rather than alienating web users who need power access and in which cases designs like the Exchange are, to one degree or another, inconsiderate of this concept. As such, again in my opinion, MM has for numerous reasons failed to weigh the importance of this issue. Sure, many of the CF community might appreciate the fact that the new Exchange works better than the old version, however I wonder how much of that is due to the additional features as compared to the layout and accessability that could even more effortlessly be provided in a Non-Flash layout. If the dozen of us on this list in the past few days turns out to be a minority when weighed against all of the Design-centric users of the other Exchanges, and if that then results in our core requests being categorized into the "not enough opposition to what MM has worked so many hours on, I URGE, BEG and IMPLORE you to consider one last request in this arena. This would be that just ONE MM team member be tasked to create a Non-Flash interface for the Exchange that would allow those of us who prefer faster and much more content user-oriented access to such vital resources to have our choice. A Visually appealing Non-Flash design with all the same power features of the current system PLUS the features requested in this thread, would not drain the resources of the MM staff to create. Heck, Matt and I have already even come up with a core look that could be applied. With Cold Fusion generating the content and layout, this would take a GREAT DEAL LESS time and effort than the same results in FLASH. It would return access to those of us who need it. Power users, Visually impaired users (power or otherwise), and anyone among the current fans of the existing Flash design who may just want a choice. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
