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November 03, 2005
Flex based Yahoo Maps and Some Cool Mashups
The new Yahoo maps that was built in Flex 1.5 went live today and it's really impressive! You can check it out here. The performance is really great and its user interface is really refined.
One of the really cool things that Yahoo has done is to expose AJAX and Flash and Flex interfaces to Maps, which is really great. The Flash API are listed here, and Flex API for Flex 1.5 available here. I do hope they'll be libraries available for Flex 2 in the near future.
Yahoo also has a developer gallery that showcases apps built on top of their API at the Yahoo Maps Application Gallery. Check them out, but one of the things that I thought was most striking was how much better, more responsive and just plain cooler the Flash/Flex based apps were than those done in AJAX. Here are 2 ones I liked based on Flash and Flex:
Metalique MashUpComing
Flikr Maps in Flash
That's not to say that AJAX is bad. On the contrary! There are some cool ones done with AJAX as well, as well as a few that combine with AJAX with Flash, such as this one:
Upcoming Events in AJAX and Flash
Overall, lots of great stuff and it's fantastic to see Yahoo supporting a range of technologies for accessing their API.
Posted by Mark Anders at November 3, 2005 07:38 AM
Comments
I have to say that I disagree with your comment 'one of the things that I thought was most striking was how much better, more responsive and just plain cooler the Flash/Flex based apps were than those done in AJAX.'.
While this should be the case, I find Google’s AJAX map system much simpler to use than this new flash based Yahoo! Beta. I am a flash designer, but flash is not always appropriate everywhere.
While I feel that flash is better suited to the development of web apps, I think that it also depends on the developers. Google's developers seem to have a much clearer sense of usability when it comes to designing these sorts of applications.
Another example is Google Mail (GMail) vs Goowy Mail, while Goowy Mail is developed in flash and there for has more opportunities to liven up the user interface, I feel that Google Mail's simpler design and interface makes it superior.
Posted by: Jack Smith at November 3, 2005 08:44 AM
Simply amazing stuff, but I think Yahoo!, Google,MSN, and AOL have a big problem coming when it comes to online services. The below link caught me by surprise. I actually had to refresh the page twice to make sure I wasn't dreaming.
Posted by: Jason at November 4, 2005 03:14 AM
Hi, sir, this is the one talked to you on the first day's morning at MAX2005 singapore. Sorry for that I didn't make it to show up next day which is today. Because something I need to do.
However, I still want to discuss with you about the information of Flash. It'll be very nice if we can talk via E-mail, Thanks a lot
Posted by: Sun Guannan at November 11, 2005 12:18 AM