With Adobe Flex, create sites people will love to shop

Adobe has taken their Flash product to the next level with Flex. You will need Flash 9 player to view their sample store application but it is well worth your time. With around 70% of all households having broadband Internet access, it is inevitable that sites like this will soon become the norm. A store like this greatly increases the usability of a site and more closely represents the concept of shopping as it is in real life rather than how it is today on the Web. Flex can seemlessly take a user from browsing, to analyzing, to comparing, to adding items to their shopping cart, all without having to refresh the screen. To be able to shop without having to wait for the screen to refresh every time it goes back to the server would be one of the biggest leaps forward from a usability standpoint in the history of the Web. This isn't new technology but it also isn't common. There are many sites using AJAX components (Google Maps is an AJAX application), however you will see more sites like the example that Adobe has put together, probably in time for your Christmas shopping this year.