HTML viewing

Does anyone know how to set the view of the MM site to HTML only? I need to be able to view the exchange in HTML in order to get a download of all the latest tags. That is unless MM has a web service or something else so I can get a listing of the latest exchange content. Michael Dinowitz Master of the House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com

On Monday, Apr 28, 2003, at 08:46 US/Pacific, Michael Dinowitz wrote: > Does anyone know how to set the view of the MM site to HTML only? I > need to be > able to view the exchange in HTML in order to get a download of all > the latest > tags. For most of the site, you can set 'HTML Version' via the Accessibility link at the bottom of any page. There is no HTML equivalent of the Exchange application, however. Nor of the Downloads, Membership or Registration applications. You need Flash installed to access those. > That is unless MM has a web service or something else so I can get a > listing of > the latest exchange content. We currently have no publicly accessible web services that would allow you to do that. Coincidentally, I gave a talk at BACFUG last week where I showed, via some internal web services, what might be possible *if* we created public web services. We're soliciting feedback on what sorts of things folks might want... Sean A Corfield -- Director, Architecture Web Technology Group -- Macromedia, Inc. tel: (415) 252-2287 -- cell: (415) 717-8473 aim/iChat: seancorfield -- http://www.macromedia.com An Architect's View -- http://www.macromedia.com/go/arch_blog Announcing Macromedia DevNet Subscriptions Maximize your power with our new premium software subscription Find out more: http://www.macromedia.com/go/devnetsubs

Hm. That kills one of the features of FA that people enjoyed. We used to have a listing of the latest CF tags and such in each issue. Lets be honest here (which usually gets me into trouble). If this was done right then people could subscribe to a weekly update of exchange content. Without such an update in their box, most people have no clue what-so-ever of what exists in the exchange. We provided that information till now, but.... Problem is getting MM to either provide such an update or give the access to people such as myself to give it. Exchange usage = more product usage = more product loyalty and exposure = sales My feedback: 1. Allow HTML access to all site parts, including the exchanges. 2. Give a web service, RSS, WDDX or some other interface to the exchange so people can get the latest content themselves (maybe not the tags directly, but at least the tag info). 3. A relationship with the various magazines, information sites, etc. to provide the content to them for redistribution. 4. A weekly email update to tell people what new material is in the exchange. This will not happen as MM has very strict email practices. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I can certainly understand why a site, any site, would rather people come to their site then just allow syndicators to leach content - however - even if you can't give full RSS/WDDX access, it would be cool, and useful to numerous sites, if you opened up a 'Here are the last 100 entries' type feed. That would take a grand total of about 30 seconds to code. ;) ======================================================================== === Raymond Camden, ColdFusion Jedi Master for Mindseye, Inc (www.mindseye.com) Member of Team Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com/go/teammacromedia) Email    : jedimaster@mindseye.com Blog     : www.camdenfamily.com/morpheus/blog Yahoo IM : morpheus "My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is." - Yoda ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I'd just like to add that I've found the new "flash only" exchange to be a wholly unsatisfying user experience.  Particularly on my PowerBook.  Honestly, it's gotten to the point where I've taken to solving my problems w/PHP because the resources are easier to access across platforms.  And let me tell you, I don't go to the MM site looking for PHP support (or CF support now for that matter). Why is it that MM is not concerned about accessibility in the exchange areas?  That makes no sense.   ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

On Monday, April 28, 2003, at 01:43 PM, Kirk Biglione wrote: > I'd just like to add that I've found the new "flash only" exchange to > be > a wholly unsatisfying user experience.  Particularly on my > PowerBook. I use a Powerbook exclusively and I don't have any issues.  What kind of problems are you having?  If it's simply speed, yes, Flash is faster on Windows than on Macs, however that is something the Flash Player team is looking into very carefully. > Honestly, it's gotten to the point where I've taken to > solving my problems w/PHP because the resources are easier to > access across platforms. You mean you have switched to an entirely different language because you don't like the exchanges?  Wow.  That seems a little drastic, but ok. > And let me tell you, I don't go to the MM > site looking for PHP support (or CF support now for that matter). No, we don't have many PHP resources on macromedia.com.  It's probably better to go to the PHP website for those.  I tend to think we have some pretty comprehensive ColdFusion resources, though.  What kinds of things are you not able to find? > Why is it that MM is not concerned about accessibility in the > exchange areas?  That makes no sense. As Sean pointed out, we have seen a sizable increase in downloads since the launch of the new site, so apparently we are doing something right.   Given that far more people are participating in the exchanges now than they were, it doesn't seem to make sense for us to support two different versions. That said, accessibility is a big concern of ours, and as Sean mentioned, I think we will probably concentrate on making the Flash version more accessible. Christian

> I use a Powerbook exclusively and I don't have any issues.  What kind > of problems are you having?  If it's simply speed, yes, Flash is faster > on Windows than on Macs, however that is something the Flash Player > team is looking into very carefully. Speed, yes.  Also my experience on the new site has generally been that whenever I'm using my Mac I frequently am notified that I'm using the wrong browser (Mozilla, Camino, or Safari).  I almost never use IE on OSX and really don't understand why I would have to do so just to access various areas of the new MM website.  Initially I tried to address this issue by switching my accessibility option to HTML.  That didn't seem to work.  In retrospect it's likely that the site was not detecting the current flash player in one or more of the other browsers. Still, the annoyance factor is extremely high.  Especially considering that I usually go to the Macromedia web site when I'm trying to solve a particular problem.  The last thing I want when I'm in that mode is to be told that I'm either using the wrong browser or I've got some other browser/plug-in issue that needs to be addressed.   ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Drastic?  No.  That's the beauty of Fusebox and a modelling tool like Adalon.  I can completely architect an application independent of the language.  Typically I'll prototype risk areas while I'm in the architecting phase -- that way there are no surprises once I begin coding.  Once the application architecture is complete it's just as easy to generate my code framework in PHP, CFM or JSP.   Based on some of the negative reinforcement I've been getting from the new Macromedia site I'm finding that it's frequently easier to solve these types of problems in PHP.  If I'm ready to generate code and most of my prototyping has been done in PHP guess which language I'll likely use for my project. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Now that I've redirected all of my bookmarks to the appropriate areas on the new site it's not so bad.  But, generally, I consider the flash- based Exchange to be simply annoying.  I realize the RIA stuff is "cool", but it's also damn slow and still does not work consistently between browsers (despite being flash). Let's look at the process of finding something in the Exchange: Recently I was searching for any custom tags or components that might support the US Postal Services web API.  I ran a search on 'USPS' and eventually got 18 results (so far so good -- except for the fact that the search hung in Mozilla and I had to switch to IE6).   Typically, I'll want to look more closely at several of the results.   Clicking on any of the results brings up the detail on the component along with a link to download (again, this is good).  So I think to myself, "Now I'll just go back and look at some of those other components.  Hmmm - how do I do that?".  Am I missing something here?  Once I've drilled down to the detail how the heck do I get back to the results of my previous search?  Seems to me like this might be one reason why you're seeing more traffic in this area.  You literally have to perform the search multiple times if you plan on looking at more than one result.  Oh, and each search is just as slow as the previous search.  I would imagine this is because thousands of other people are re-running their previous searches simultaneously. OK, enough of this rant.  I suppose it's possible that my eyesight is finally going and I've missed some important (and very cool and interactive) button that would magically take me back to my previous search results.  In the old HTML days (remember those) we had a thing called the Back Button.  It worked pretty well.   > That said, accessibility is a big concern of ours, and as Sean > mentioned, I think we will probably concentrate on making the Flash > version more accessible. I may have misread, but I thought that I saw a claim that the new site was 508 compliant.  That can't be right. > Christian

On Tuesday, Apr 29, 2003, at 12:00 US/Pacific, Kirk Biglione wrote: > Speed, yes.  Also my experience on the new site has generally been > that whenever I'm using my Mac I frequently am notified that I'm using > the wrong browser (Mozilla, Camino, or Safari).  I almost never use IE Safari (Beta 2) works just fine with macromedia.com (Beta 1 had bugs in the handling of binary posts that prevented Flash Remoting from working). I use Safari most of the time. Mozilla 1.2.1 works just fine (I use that occasionally) but Mozilla 1.3 has introduced bugs that prevent Flash Remoting working. See Mozilla's bugbase:   http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=169093 Camino is based off the same codebase as Mozilla and suffers from the same problem as Mozilla 1.3. Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

On Tuesday, April 29, 2003, at 03:00 PM, Kirk Biglione wrote: > Speed, yes.  Also my experience on the new site has generally been > that whenever I'm using my Mac I frequently am notified that I'm using > the wrong browser (Mozilla, Camino, or Safari). I use Safari and Mozilla (still can't get away with a single browser on a Mac yet) and I haven't seen this problem, but I don't actually spend a lot of time on the Exchanges.  I will poke around and see if I can recreate this.  Do you get taken to some kind of system requirements page? > Once I've drilled down to the detail how the heck do I get back > to the results of my previous search?  Seems to me like this might be > one reason why you're seeing more traffic in this area. We are actually seeing more downloads, but your point is well taken.   Have you submitted this issue on the Macromedia.com feedback form?  (I don't want to submit it if you already have.)  You can find it here: http://www.macromedia.com/bin/webfeedback.cgi Christian

On Monday, Apr 28, 2003, at 10:19 US/Pacific, Michael Dinowitz wrote: > Lets be honest here (which usually gets me into trouble). Funny, I find the same problem :) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I'll be talking to various folks internally about the possibility of providing a Web Service interface to the Exchange. The current API was designed for the Flash UI and needs some 'helper' methods added and some method signatures simplified if we decide to provide a public Web Service. I can't promise anything. > Exchange usage = more product usage = more product loyalty and > exposure = sales Interestingly, Exchange traffic and Exchange downloads have increased (quite dramatically) since we launched the new Flash version. > 1. Allow HTML access to all site parts, including the exchanges. My sense of the feeling here is that we will not support two versions of the applications so there will not be an HTML version of the Exchange. We will continue to make the Flash version more "accessible" in various ways. > 2. Give a web service, RSS, WDDX or some other interface to the > exchange so > people can get the latest content themselves (maybe not the tags > directly, but > at least the tag info). This is something I'm starting to discuss internally, based on discussions with a number of CF developers. > 3. A relationship with the various magazines, information sites, etc. > to provide > the content to them for redistribution. A Web Service and/or RSS feed would satisfy that need - see (2) above. > 4. A weekly email update to tell people what new material is in the > exchange. > This will not happen as MM has very strict email practices. Given the strict controls on email, I suspect you are correct. It would need to take the form of an "Exchange Newsletter" and require the double opt-in that the DevNet Newsletter currently has. I can't speak to this topic in any detail however. Sean A Corfield -- Director, Architecture Web Technology Group -- Macromedia, Inc. tel: (415) 252-2287 -- cell: (415) 717-8473 aim/iChat: seancorfield -- http://www.macromedia.com An Architect's View -- http://www.macromedia.com/go/arch_blog Announcing Macromedia DevNet Subscriptions Maximize your power with our new premium software subscription Find out more: http://www.macromedia.com/go/devnetsubs

> Interestingly, Exchange traffic and Exchange downloads have increased > (quite dramatically) since we launched the new Flash version. You should consider that the old Broadvision based Exchange for DW and Flash was *really* bad, so bad that even if the new version has many shortcomings (in my opinion), it's still much better than the old monster :-) ---------------------------- Massimo Foti http://www.massimocorner.com ----------------------------