Macromedia announced today that the creator of the "Flash 99% bad" report, Jakob Nielsen will be working with them to develop a "best practices" for rich Internet applications..
The buzz is naturally on in the Flash community. Here are some links to coverage of the announcement:
This really is not a surprise, if Flash is going to be accepted as a web application tool among the corporate world, Macromedia has to do something to offset Nielsen's "Flash: 99% Bad" column from last year. Buying Nielsen's consulting services is probably the fastest way to achieve this. So now we're getting Jakob MX.
This is no joke, folks. In an announcement that is sure to be the biggest shocker in the Flash community, Nielsen will be coaching Macromedia on usability.
This scares me, as much as I admire the guys writings, agree with many of his concepts, I still think he just doesn't 'get' flash. Personally I'd rather see Steve Krug, or Chris McGregor, maybe even Marie Tahir doing this, as these people have more realistic ideas to modern web usability.
I think this can be helpful reading for developers, but will also help with client communications, and the long-term effect should be to help the viewing audience around the world.
[Update, found another site that had some interesting comments around the Nielsen/Macromedia partnership:
Okay, so let me get this straight. Jakob Nielsen, a self-penned usability “expert,” writes an essay that drags Macromedia and the Flash development community through the mud. Macromedia reads the essay, believes he must know something, 'cause he sure sounds pissed, so they form a partnership with the guy
There are some really good comments (on both sides of the discussion) over at "What Do I Know", take the time to read it. ]
I think its good that Macromedia keep setting focus on usability, especially since Flash is more and more becoming a platform for applications. In this regard Jakob should have a lot to contribute. I can also see why Macromedia would choose Jakob, considering his past criticism. Having Nielsen onboard is a good way to take the edge off of his former criticism of Flash.
BUT, I have a hard time seeing that Nielsen is the right choice for the job of creating a best practices paper for Macromedia. There are a number of other usability experts that have done a lot more research on web and multimedia than Nielsen. Notably User Interface Engineering released their "Making the Best with Flash", which in my opinion shows a deeper understanding of Flash and its abilities and constraints than what I have ever seen from Nielsen.
But I guess its a case of choosing celebrity over skills. Sadly.
The RSS Auto-discovery link tag has been changed.
This change comes in response to (valid) criticism that the old way was too general, and could cause confusion if, in the future, there were other XML-based formats that pages wanted to link to. Using a more specific MIME type (the exact type was suggested by Dan Brickley) solves this potential problem, and the more specific title goes along with it.
Here is the link tag as it now stands:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="url/to/rss/file" />
