I’m starting to get used to Comcast’s smartzone webmail front end. It is an ajaxy / desktopish mail client that exposes way more functionality then the old one. This type of functionality usually comes at a price, and in this case the price was having to use a mouse. There are a number of keyboard shortcuts, but the it is a full page help buried in the preferences pane. I prefer the narrow right-hand window like the type seen in some Microsoft office products. ...
Arpit led another session about how and when to use Flash in an Ajax world. One of the attendees was a Microsoft Silverlight manager and was a solid hour of dispelling myths about RIA in general. There is still a large population that thinks Flash/Silverlight are bad for SEO and not enough people know of Adobe’s recent collaborations with Google and Microsoft, including project Ichabod that makes Flash more indexable than Ajax (some details here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adobe_ichabod_flash_ajax.php). We also talked about how the RIA vs traditional html choice is often made unconsciously before the IA/Design phase and what we need to do in order to help inform that choice. Arpit is going to have a conversation later with a manager from Microsoft concerning Rich Internet Application development in Philadelphia. ...