Portal Ain't Flashy

[Former Member]

One thing that seems to come up time and time again within the realm of Enterprise Portal is the need to replace intranet and internet sites with the Portal. And one of the major stumbling blocks to this shift is that users see the portal as being a fairly dull and uninspiring environment to work in. As one of my clients recently put it "Portal Ain't Flashy!" This statement really made an impact on me and got me thinking... why ain't the Portal Flashy? I mean is there a good reason? Isn't it built on industry standards like HTML, JavaScript, JSP, J2EE and even supports Adobe Flash and Flex now. So what gives? Why is it seemingly so hard to make the portal look and act more like a cutting edge website?  Some of you may think that this is fairly shallow and that the portal is more then just about looking good and I agree. However, you only had to attend some of the Adobe Flex sessions at one of the recent Tech Ed's to realise how easily people are wooed by things that look and feel good. I mean the OOOOHHHHSSS! and AAAAHHHHSS! that echoed forth from these sessions were ridiculous. Anytime one of the presenters hovered over a chart that resulted in the animation of another element, grown men and women seemed to lose all inhibition and vocalized their amazement like 10 year olds! 😉  This blog is really an attempt to get people thinking, a catalyst for people who may have already done something "flashy" in the portal to talk about it and if possible show others what they have achieved. So please post your comments here and let's try to work on making the portal more flashy or at least discuss the reasons why we can't.