I don't know if folks have noticed, but ST Micro have a 'new' web site.
It is broken in oh so many ways :-(
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It forces you to use Flash. I can't get at technical documents without enabling Flash.
I don't think it is ST Micro's role to force customers to use proprietary technology.
The new web site appears to have broken accessibility. I believe that large corporations, including ST Micro, should accept their social responsibilities to provide accessible web sites. IMHO, they should enable people with a disability, for example impaired vision, to access and use information. This feels especially true for information which would enable someone to earn a living. I had thought providing accessibility was a solved problem. Apparently ST's web developers aren't familiar with the issues, the solutions, or choose not to use them. It even fails to support the Mac's "text to speech" facility. IMHO, this is a sad day for the disabled.
The web site has broken Firefox's incremental text search. I often use incremental search on a long page to find the section I want. For example, I use incremental search to find the appropriate documents when I am looking at the STM32F application notes.
The new web site's use of Flash has broken this.
Much of the STM32F access now uses a 'parametric search', implemented in Flash.
It has several problems:
1. It is much larger than my screen, so I have to scroll around a lot.
2. It doesn't support navigation gestures (on my Mac) so driving around is cumbersome, I need to use scroll bars :-(
3. It can be reconfigured to make up for the fact that it is horribly awkward to use, but it forgets my re-configration between uses. (Side note: IMHO, it is not wise to design something that is so horrible to use that you have to make it even more complicated to allow the user to fix it's failings.) Argh!
4. It doesn't properly restrict values in the UI to valid values (for example, you can ask for almost any Flash size)
5. It doesn't feedback the impact of user parameter selections into other dependent parameters. For example, if I choose 1MB Flash, lots of other parameter options should disappear, but don't.
6. It is much slower than the previous UI if you know roughly want you are looking for.
In short, IMHO it is inferior for engineers.
Other parts of the site are even worse, with fancy animated graphics that I am forced to wait for, but which carry almost no useful information.
I feel pretty strongly on this one (did you guess :-), as my old company built a Java applet in 1995 which did all this across the Internet using servers with less computing power than an STM32F. Our work wasn't a one off 'freak' piece of development, if you browse around you an easily find other semiconductor manufacturers who can make a reasonable job of it. 15 years later ST's web developers can't.
Summary - if you have time, and feel strongly about this, please visit ST. See what you think, and if you feel the urge, feedback to them.
If ST badly screw up, the popularity of their products, like STM32F may be reduced, and ultimately we all suffer.
Rant end}
