paragiraffe

I’ve talked about this a couple of times before, but I am the very proud owner of a Nike + iPod Sport Kit. I think very highly of this product and am actually on my second unit (by my own fault) because at this point, not having one is not an option. It’s my gym membership.

The most important part of the kit, really, is the corresponding Nike+ website. It tracks your runs and progress and allows you to compare a runs, set goals, and challenge other runners. Other than all the great features, it completely sucks.

First of all, it’s a full-Flash website, something that generally makes me want to throw up in my mouth. This means that in order to even log in (which I have to do almost every damn time! can I get a longer cookie please?) I have to wait for an animation. Then it loads my most current run, so, again, animation. If I want to go to another area in the site, I have to wait for the new pane to slide in or whatever and for a sound to play. And then I have to wait for the data to load. Please shoot me.

This is a data-driven application, and having to wait while the admittedly slick but ultimately time-wasting animations play out is really, really frustrating. If I had a really great run, I can’t link to it and say, “Look at my really great run!” (You know, if I ever had one of those.) And there’s no feeds for my run data, unless I want to grab the hidden XML files before they’re sent to Nike.

So those are my gripes about the Nike+ website, but I also think they highlight some problems with doing full-Flash sites in general. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Flash and have seen it used in some really cool and interesting ways, but most of it is crap.

P.S. Partially inspired by Jeff’s post about Flash, so read that, too.