Re: FLASH: MM, why the hassle?!

[David Gary Studios]

>there are multiple paths in to Macromedia, depending on what

>

you want to do. Although there's not an explicit critiquesmacromedia [dot] com

<

critiquesmacromedia [dot] com (mailto:critiquesmacromedia [dot] com)

>

>address, you can talk with customer service, with support, with any of the

>development teams, and with various other groups. For general soapbox work

>there's also a bunch of us on the various lists too.)



Hiya John,


Thanks, as always, for addressing some of these issues. You are actually one

of the only MM reps that addresses anything on this list, besides the

sometimes more selective Dave Mendels(sp?) I still however am lost on where

to find these contact emails you refer to above. Would you please post these

contacts here?  Customer Service probably wouldnt handle most of the issues

directed toward this "developer's" list.  "Support"? Could you relay a

little more info on what or where MM's "support" contact is? Contacting the

"development teams"? Specific emails? Samples of "various other groups". I

might be missing something, but Ive scanned MM's site and cannot find one

direct email for addressing development and progressive issues. I have

rarely seen MM's participation in the Flash oriented NGs or on this

professional developers list and with the release of Flash4 and it's more

seasoned programming capabilities, MM's ignorance of these developer support

forums will not help it's reputation with the development community. Apple

made the same mistake and thought they were too cool for school. Now the

class honor student owns almost half of their company.


I have been off the list for a while and these issues might have been

discussed already, so apologies if necessary. I simply havent found that

much support or involvement from MM with it's market developers.


>For general soapbox work

>there's also a bunch of us on the various lists too.)

So far, thats all Ive had to bet on.<g>



>> I visited "Shockwave.com" and I must say that this is probably one

>> of the most awfully designed Flash sites I've seen....


>well, that does it [sniffle]... I'm going back to playing the accordion,

>this visual design stuff just breaks my heart, goodbye cruel world.... :~(



Well after re-reading my post it might seem that my comments seem straight

forward, but why beat around the bush? This is the age of short attention

span. I'm the last person to start bashing people's work. I simply found it

surprising that with MM's budget they could'nt have hired a firm or brought

a premier designer inhouse that at least knew the first thing about "generic

ergonomics" and professional design application. Were is their network of

Director Interactive Design graduates? These are elementary fundamentals,

man. You dont need a Flash Guru to access effective design principals. Read

the Flash NG's sometimes and you will see the criticism that MM recieves for

it's amateur design principals for its own online representation. Please

understand that MM's marketing decision is ALL of our marketing decisions,

because most professionals spend thousands of hours devoted to MM's

technology. We keep the candle lit. MM's products and it's consumer base are

directed almost totally toward the global network. Ask anyone that doesn't

own a computer who Macromedia is and 9 times outa 10 they look at you funny.

However, online, MM is in everyone's vocabulary and their online

representation can effect us all. I hope that somewhat justifies my

comments.



>(Actually, folks here have big bets on this investment. I'm sorry that it

>didn't reach your muse directly, but I still hope that others find it to be

>more than a little delightful.)


It would have been delightful for the design of a doomed "tech-head"

start-up, not a leader in high-end Multimedia graphics software.


>And hey, all, if you haven't done so already, then please *do* download the

>new Shockwave 7.02 Player from the new shockwave.com site


Yes, the Shockwave 7.02 player is very cool, confusing to the net newbies,

but very cool and a benefit to us all.

The only problem is that it might get somewhat lost in the other thousand

little windows that bug our desktops everyday and crowd our taskbar, i.e.

Real Player, ICQ, NS messenger, Quicktime, etc. I would personally like to

see MM's attention stay directed towards more of a "total portal" for the

"coolest" stuff on the net. It looks like its trying with shockwave.com, but

simply fails due to the non- intuitive, boring and somewhat migraine use of

Flash design, it's own web application Flagship.


Go figure.


Ok, Ok, off the soapdish, (Applause,....well, for getting off<g>)


-DG-

<http://www.davidgarystudios.com>




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