well...

In fairness -

(and avoiding all the 'tard slinging and childish "all you fanbois" stuff which never fails to make rtegister threads read like 6th form toilet walls... honestly why not just write "...is gay" after everyone's post that doesn't agree with you?)

As a UI designer who has always argued against RIAs and superfluous shite (and often lost money for doing so) I'm glad that at least one or two people in here are looking at the real picture.

I don't like high-bandwidth-for-no-reason crapola. I see RIAs as the chelsea tractors of the internet: keeping maintenance contracts alive and driving the economy, sure... but f**king things up for everyone else.

Designers have completely forgotten our place in the industry, thanks to the fact that most companies are trying to sell to 12 year olds with epilepsy inducing tat. But you know what?

Bad project managers who can't say no to a client have their share of the blame, too. Clients who don't understand the medium they are paying £50K to use can also take a tiny portion of the blame... but not really, cos it's not their job and that's why they pay £50K

I've never seen a so-called RIA that couldn't be duplicated by clever redesign of very low-level, low bandwidth technologies.

So yeah - just a point in defence of a minority of people who call ourselves "graphic designers" or "UI designers" - we are honestly not all obsessed by flashing crap. Some of us do actually believe that "design" means subtracting, not adding.

I can only imagine the disasters that would result if most web designers attempted anything real, like engineering or architecture... "sure, you'll need to move the train station, build another reservoir, and the traffic coming and going to the supermarket will submerge the entire town in three months... but look! Big lights! Shiny! Doors open-close! Swish-swish!

This is not "design", it's an excuse to save up for a stupid haircut and a plastic figurine of money mark. There are some designers left in the world.

Now, let the win v mac thinly concealed homoerotica continue, sluggers ;-)