I blogged earlier on this blog about my interest in Adobe Flex, because I had started to look into it as a result of Seesmic using Flex. To my surprise, Mike Potter left a comment offering me the tools to get started with Adobe Flex.
Well, I’m happy to report that I received them today. What came is O’Reilly’s Essential ActionScript 3.0 (Essential)
This was all in my previous post, but I feel it needs its own post. And yes, I understand this is all in beta. So please don’t go on about that. Ok, here comes the rant.
I can’t stand the current “Add a feature request”. It should be more of a forum. As well as report a bug.
And while I’m at it, the “Contact us” button is horrible. And the reason it is horrible, is because I can’t contact you through it. I use gMail, I don’t have Thunderbird or Outlook or some other stand alone email application which clicking the ‘Contact us” link insists on opening. I even use a plugin in firefox so that when I do click on an email link, it opens a new tab in gMail, but that doesn’t work in Seesmic. And normal websites will tell me the email address in the bottom of the browser when I mouse over the link. Not is Seesmic.
I only point these things out because I love you Seesmic <3
Update: I rant in video too! Yipee!
I researched Adobe Flex back in the day, but ended up using straight PHP. (for the geeks in the audience, I’m using the Zend Framework now on my personal stuff) After reading the wikipedia entry and the flex.org website, it looks like it has come a long way, and some pretty high traffic sites use it. And yes, I’m fully aware that Seesmic is labeled as pre-alpha, but in reality, the amount of users says it is more of a beta.
Well, I can see that Flex *should* be able to handle what Seesmic throws at it. I’ve used Coldfusion in the past as well, and Coldfusion just struck me as a too simplified to get real work done, perhaps that has come a long way too.
One of the points that Flex has that makes me think it could possibly be enterprise ready is that you can use Java EE with it. Java of course has it’s ups and downs, and I’ve certainly shared in the joy and pain when coding in Java, but this give me hope for Flex.
So after doing this research, I’m definitely interested in working on some projects with Adobe Flex. It has potential. And as a guy that tends to code back ends, and leave the front end to the graphically non-challenged, Flex seems to create a nice front end, even when you don’t really have those genes. 
Just look at my header on this blog. Anyway, I’m always looking to learn new things, and Flex looks like a great one, although, I think it will be pretty easy to pick up.
An example that happened right after I finished my last post.
I was in the public timeline, and was watching a video from @deek, and clicked on ‘All deek’s videos’ and this is the result. Happens all the time.
oooh, and now look at what happened when I clicked on ‘MyVideos’, my ‘Public’ is grayed out.
I know it is pre-alpha. But it seems like it should be the stuff in the back end that is struggling, not the front end.
I only point it out because I care
But seriously, it may be time to find another solution to the Adobe Flex menu.
This could be a recurring theme for a post, although I don’t want to be negative. But the current menu on the left side of Seesmic is so, so frustrating. I get different results every time up refresh, and not because things are updating either. I get from 0 results, to days ago results. And if I change from one to another, like go from public to friends, oh man, hang on, frustration is on the way. I understand it is a fancy flippy visually fun menu, but the more videos that arrive, the more frustrating it becomes. Resulting is multiple logouts and logins per day. And don’t even get my started on when the menu button like Public grays out. Happens all the time.
Now full disclosure here. I am using Firefox on Linux. My sole operating system right now. Maybe the menu works flawlessly on Safari on the Mac and on whatever on Windows, but I find Firefox to be pretty similar an experience as it was on Windows.
Ok, so I say all that to say this. Perhaps it’s just a bit much Flex. Or needs to be tuned some more for the increased loads it is getting. Based on other large sites using Flex, I have to believe Seesmic is doable on this platform.
UPDATE: I posted something on Seesmic about this as well: