Given how badly Flash is getting smacked-down at the moment, I find this hilarious.
Right now, Adobe.com’s store page (where you get redirected if you google for Adobe products) doesn’t work in a mainstream desktop browser (Firefox). I go to the page, and suddenly my keyboard stops working, and the mouse is only half working. WTF?
Ah. A bit of digging, and I find crap like this:
…fully “custom” scrollbar, which I suspect is disabling keyboard and mouse input.
What does this achieve?
- HEY! It looks “different”!
- Confusing: looks like a Tab, instead of a scrollbar
- Reduces performance: this scrollbar *flickers* as you drag it, because the rendering routine is so horrendously slow. This is on a Core2 Duo processor that’s not doing anything else.
What does it break (aside from performance)?
- Keyboard navigation: spacebar, cursor keys, and left/right switch tab (VERY annoying: it seizes control of your keyboard and won’t let you navigate away)
- Mouse navigation: it bypasses the web-browser (stupid idea, Adobe), and so all the mouse gestures – even the OS-built-ins like 2-finger-scroll – stop working
It’s like a microcosm of why people get frustrated with Adobe – and perhaps of how Flash is going to go down in flames. It would be subtle and clever if today were April 1st:
- Who cares what the user thinks? Give them useless crap that doesn’t even look pretty! (think of the features added in most revisions of CS)
- …but FORCE it on them, too; choice is bad! (recall the Adobe trojan that they wrote to take over your PC and force-install Adobe products)
- Performance? Who cares about performance? (Illustrator and large files … nuff said)