Toast.com offers a Flash based GUI for their free e-mail service. It looks good, and I am sure it will appeal to those that think Hotmail and friends look too damn ugly. But the usability of this e-mail Flash application could have used a real workover.
First of all, why not use some common GUI idioms instead of making up their own GUI? This kind of application is most certianly not going to become the primary application for any of the users (ok, I take that back — there might be one or two that actually check e-mail all day).
It also seems to me like this application is actually slower in Flash than it would have been in HTML.
Both of these main flaws could be remedied, and I hope they will. In my opinion all that this example of the use of Flash has going for it right now, is that it looks good.
[Via John Dowdell]
Yeah I agree…
It’s AWESOME to see people developing more and more applications in Flash.
I also agree that while this is a great example, it could have done with using a more common UI. Having all the buttons at the base of the pages (eg attachments, print, HTML etc) is a bit odd.
Oh well in the end it still worked. And I quite enjoyed using it. It was a bit slower than my normal mail app, even the sending from my work email to there took a while.
I can only see better things in the future, with standard compliant browsers, more downloads of Flash player, more Flash enabled devices and new systems like the Flash Communication Server MX …
I love this job :)