Why Ta-da is better than Bla-bla

Having followed the Ruby on Rails weblog I’ve known about Bla-bla List for some time now. However it’s appearance on Forever Geek made me figure I’d give the application a shot and try it out for size.

Now, I won’t get into the technical side of the arguments, but Bla-bla List fails to even come close to competing with the experience of using Ta-da List.

Reasons Ta-da’ing beats Bla-bla’ing

• My scroll wheel actually scrolls
• I can copy/paste parts of my lists
• Newly added items don’t appear in seemingly random places on the list
• Doesn’t force new windows on me
• I can use my back and print buttons
• Navigating “up” (Shift + Up) gives me the next sensible part of the hierarchy
• I can go directly to my lists from a bookmark
• Popup dialogs are actually popup dialogs, not something floating inside the window
• Confirmation dialog has buttons in a sane order (Yes to the left)
• My browsers autocompletion and username/password remembering features work
• I can control my fontsize and colors
• HTML > Flash

(This list is naturally also available as “a shared list(Why Ta-da List > Bla-bla List)”:http://blablalist.com/list/jakob/WhyTa-daIsBetterThanBla-bla.)

By heavy use of Flash Bla-bla List not only fails to create an application that technically isn’t comparable to Ta-da List, but also fails to provide a user experience that comes to close the one of Ta-da List.