worth it?

the question i've been mulling over for days is: will all this work be worth it?

and i can say, having now played around in flex builder, with just the one chunk of data i have working, that yes, yes it's entirely worth it.

the ability to take that data, and format it from a drop down, to a list, to a check list, to whatever in about 30 seconds tells me that whatever time is spent getting data transported (which, now that i understand it isn't much) will be repayed in massive time savings using standard controls to disply the information.

i've realized for a long time that the obstacle we face designing for the web isn't the one we think it is. most people would expect the heavy parts to be the programming application logic (the calculations and changing and binding data part) or even the datastorage (where in you put  and get data from the database) but the truth is the real work always comes from the presentation.

i can easily spend three or more hours working on master-detail lists (which are like summary lists of data --say a list of posts, which when you click on the post takes you to the editing of the post) and whats more,  when i do one, i basically can copy some of it and re-use it but there is always modification, and always formatting and including special features.

so lets say it takes a mean time of 1.5 hours for a good master detail. in flex, 10 mins. maybe less. and it's always 10 mins. always. because of standardized components like the list component. they always look the same, work the same, and require the same work.

this in itself, when applied to the myriad of components we deal with drop downs (which even in html i have down to 1 line of code), lists, and so on saves time exponentially.

so maybe, what we need then, is a set of standardized object based html controls.

if someone could do that.. write a way to just say pass this list of users to this object, tell it which bits to show and your done, i would use html without compunction.

but, no one has, and i doubt anyone will. if i had more time (comedy!) i would write it myself.