Sunday, March 13, 2005

Flash user interface

We usually identify Flash as a language for making web animations, with or without interaction. Even games...And although Flash has given us, also, extraordinary examples of user interface creativity, its applicability for creating user interfaces is far from being the mainstream. Flash is not very easy. I'm no expert, but normally, we have to create the entire look from scratch...and although that brings flexibility it also takes time and is more suited for artistic designers (or at least someone with that capability). I, for example, couldn't create a better interface than the one HTML gives me. So I stick with HTML.
However, if we could specify a Flash interface in XML things would become a lot easier. That's what Lazlo creators thought. I already tried it and I think they made a very good product. With Lazlo you get a consistent look of windows, dialogs, buttons, sliders, etc. It clearly resembles a desktop application. You do not have to worry too much about the look (it's already great) and just create XML for the interface and a few JavaScript for animations and other dynamic content.
Another feature I think it's great is that Lazlo works with data in XML format. This means that if you want to populate a table, you can easily map the XML with table columns. Also, you can get this XML from a web service very easily. Try the demos and have a look at the interactive tutorial...you'll probably be amazed.
One last thing, it's free and has better documentation than many commercial stuff that I've seen.