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flash: the big lie

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bm bradley

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I've been looking at some of the website sin sigs lately. man oh man, whats with all the flash? the only people I know that like flash are designers, you know the kind of guys that will tell ya you need to update all your software if you can't see their site... it really blows :(
 
flash has its place. I am not a big fan of it, but if done right I think its fine. The number of people with dial up is dwindling and while thats not an excuse to have a site with every single actionscript and video you can put on your server playing, they can be more interactive with less people being excluded. Making your site viewable with only the latest flash player and browsers is not a smart idea. Many people CANT upgrade certain things. My day job runs a bunch of software that works (and was written for)with IE6. Company states not to upgrade browsers (we tried and it made problems). Downloadfing flash updates is blocked at the server for some reason so everyone at the place is surfing on 10yr old technology, just a fast connection. And several of them this is thier only internet access.

This is where anylitics comes in and you find out what your demographic is and optimize for that. If 99% of your visitors are on T1 lines with the latest FF version, then load your site down, most will never notice.
 
vwgn said:
flash has its place. I am not a big fan of it, but if done right I
think its fine. The number of people with dial up is dwindling and
while thats not an excuse to have a site with every single
actionscript and video you can put on your server playing, they can
be more interactive with less people being excluded. Making your site
viewable with only the latest flash player and browsers is not a
smart idea. Many people CANT upgrade certain things. My day job runs
a bunch of software that works (and was written for)with IE6.
Company states not to upgrade browsers (we tried and it made
problems). Downloadfing flash updates is blocked at the server for
some reason so everyone at the place is surfing on 10yr old
technology, just a fast connection. And several of them this is thier
only internet access.

This is where anylitics comes in and you find out what your
demographic is and optimize for that. If 99% of your visitors are on
T1 lines with the latest FF version, then load your site down, most
will never notice.
Click to expand...
--

I have a pretty goos contention and I'm waiting 2-3 seconds per image to load on some of these site. that's a very very very long time in todays world... and it's not even like they are large images either, that's the weird part... ?
 
Of course one of the things not considered by many is that flash pages are not read in the same way as "old fashioned" straight html pages by the search engine "spiders" when indexing, so you may have the cooooooolest flash site around, but you could end up paying for clicks to get found if you're buried in search results.

--
Eric in Florida
 
I know of many users who refuse to install new versions of flash due to the security concerns. I wonder if site owners are aware of that and ignore the issue, or are they just blindly following whatever strategy their web designers promote?

Adox

--

 
bm bradley said:
vwgn said:
flash has its place. I am not a big fan of it, but if done right I
think its fine. The number of people with dial up is dwindling and
while thats not an excuse to have a site with every single
actionscript and video you can put on your server playing, they can
be more interactive with less people being excluded. Making your site
viewable with only the latest flash player and browsers is not a
smart idea. Many people CANT upgrade certain things. My day job runs
a bunch of software that works (and was written for)with IE6.
Company states not to upgrade browsers (we tried and it made
problems). Downloadfing flash updates is blocked at the server for
some reason so everyone at the place is surfing on 10yr old
technology, just a fast connection. And several of them this is thier
only internet access.

This is where anylitics comes in and you find out what your
demographic is and optimize for that. If 99% of your visitors are on
T1 lines with the latest FF version, then load your site down, most
will never notice.
Click to expand...
--
I have a pretty goos contention and I'm waiting 2-3 seconds per image
to load on some of these site. that's a very very very long time in
todays world... and it's not even like they are large images either,
that's the weird part... ?
Click to expand...
2 to 3 secs per image is horrible... Obviosly we dont have specific sites you visited to actually compare, so I agree, way too much. A whole page of large thumbnails, small images should load almost instantly if done right. to view the largest image in gallery by itself should not take more than a second or two on most dsl connections (if it was optimized right) . I revamped a website for a company and all thier thumbnails of employees and projects that were used as links to the specific pages (not ideal to start) were just resized in front page (another bad idea by someone) from full res images from camera and they all were like 2mb each! The page had almost 30 of them! They didnt understand why I wanted to charge them for image optimizing and sorting (making 100x100px images for thumbnails and 640x480 for full) pics

webpagesthatsuck.com is a constant source of entertainment and disbelief for me. Im not a top level web design guru, but it blows my mind at what people pay for and approve in websites..
 
vwgn said:
bm bradley said:
vwgn said:
flash has its place. I am not a big fan of it, but if done right I
think its fine. The number of people with dial up is dwindling and
while thats not an excuse to have a site with every single
actionscript and video you can put on your server playing, they can
be more interactive with less people being excluded. Making your site
viewable with only the latest flash player and browsers is not a
smart idea. Many people CANT upgrade certain things. My day job runs
a bunch of software that works (and was written for)with IE6.
Company states not to upgrade browsers (we tried and it made
problems). Downloadfing flash updates is blocked at the server for
some reason so everyone at the place is surfing on 10yr old
technology, just a fast connection. And several of them this is thier
only internet access.

This is where anylitics comes in and you find out what your
demographic is and optimize for that. If 99% of your visitors are on
T1 lines with the latest FF version, then load your site down, most
will never notice.
Click to expand...
--
I have a pretty goos contention and I'm waiting 2-3 seconds per image
to load on some of these site. that's a very very very long time in
todays world... and it's not even like they are large images either,
that's the weird part... ?
Click to expand...
2 to 3 secs per image is horrible... Obviosly we dont have specific
sites you visited to actually compare, so I agree, way too much. A
whole page of large thumbnails, small images should load almost
instantly if done right. to view the largest image in gallery by
itself should not take more than a second or two on most dsl
connections (if it was optimized right) . I revamped a website for a
company and all thier thumbnails of employees and projects that were
used as links to the specific pages (not ideal to start) were just
resized in front page (another bad idea by someone) from full res
images from camera and they all were like 2mb each! The page had
almost 30 of them! They didnt understand why I wanted to charge them
for image optimizing and sorting (making 100x100px images for
thumbnails and 640x480 for full) pics

webpagesthatsuck.com is a constant source of entertainment and
disbelief for me. Im not a top level web design guru, but it blows my
mind at what people pay for and approve in websites..
Click to expand...
--

I have a very simple website.... just uses a bit simple script, no flash at all.. wanton.com works for what I need.... some of the flash site I've looked at lately had no way back to the top of the galleries except backing through all the images... some really really poor design... :(
 
adox said:
I know of many users who refuse to install new versions of flash due
to the security concerns. I wonder if site owners are aware of that
and ignore the issue, or are they just blindly following whatever
strategy their web designers promote?
Click to expand...
Actually, this is the main reason that I have a new version of flash. The older versions are more likely to have known security issues.

The requirement to have a new version of flash is usually ignorance -- a designer/programmer who codes against the latest version (or makes use of newer tools and frameworks) without realizing that this excludes many people.
 
bm bradley said:
I have a very simple website.... just uses a bit simple script, no
flash at all.. wanton.com works for what I need.... some of the flash
site I've looked at lately had no way back to the top of the
galleries except backing through all the images... some really really
poor design... :(
Click to expand...
I was on a site a while back that when you clicked on a product thumbnail to view details, description etc it opened up the new page with no browser bar, resized it etc just like alot of sites do, except they didnt make it open in a new window.... you had to close the window (which closes the browser if you have only one tab open). It was like they just forgot the target=" blank" on the whole thing.. something that should have been caught and fixed.. very frustrating..
 
vwgn said:
I was on a site a while back that when you clicked on a product
thumbnail to view details, description etc it opened up the new page
with no browser bar, resized it etc just like alot of sites do,
except they didnt make it open in a new window.... you had to close
the window (which closes the browser if you have only one tab open).
It was like they just forgot the target=" blank" on the whole thing..
something that should have been caught and fixed.. very frustrating..
Click to expand...
--

look what they did to marktucker.com.... it's pitiful. the images won't even open full size... you have to scroll around a frame to see the images.... super poor design
 
Wow, that Tucker site is terrible. Plain and simply unusable on a Mac and Firefox.

But, bad design and coding can be done in HTML as well. Bad design and bad compatability are a problem. Flash in itself isn't the problem. Even Flash's disadvantage in search engines can (mostly) be overcome. Admittedly with more work.

I like Flash as spice (small bits of it on a page, not an entire Flash page).

I'm a commercial shooter. What friends who shoot weddings tell me is that brides REALLY want to be "wowed" by the site. Why brides are so concerned with the web design, rather than the photographs, is confusing. But,it explains why we see so many "Flash being over used" photographer's websites.
--
Tom Ferguson
http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com
 
Tom Ferguson said:
Wow, that Tucker site is terrible. Plain and simply unusable on a Mac
and Firefox.
Click to expand...
yeah and I love his work, a real inspiration to me... over the years his site has gotten worse and worse...
Tom Ferguson said:
I'm a commercial shooter. What friends who shoot weddings tell me is
that brides REALLY want to be "wowed" by the site. Why brides are so
concerned with the web design, rather than the photographs, is
confusing. But,it explains why we see so many "Flash being over used"
photographer's websites.
Click to expand...
that's very common, however there has to be a point where the site is easy to navigate and the images load quickly ... I have seen a few good sites however for the most part the site i see here in sigs are the flash equivalent of being built in netscape 2.0 :)
 
vwgn said:
bm bradley said:
vwgn said:
flash has its place. I am not a big fan of it, but if done right I
think its fine. The number of people with dial up is dwindling and
while thats not an excuse to have a site with every single
actionscript and video you can put on your server playing, they can
be more interactive with less people being excluded. Making your site
viewable with only the latest flash player and browsers is not a
smart idea. Many people CANT upgrade certain things. My day job runs
a bunch of software that works (and was written for)with IE6.
Company states not to upgrade browsers (we tried and it made
problems). Downloadfing flash updates is blocked at the server for
some reason so everyone at the place is surfing on 10yr old
technology, just a fast connection. And several of them this is thier
only internet access.

This is where anylitics comes in and you find out what your
demographic is and optimize for that. If 99% of your visitors are on
T1 lines with the latest FF version, then load your site down, most
will never notice.
Click to expand...
--
I have a pretty goos contention and I'm waiting 2-3 seconds per image
to load on some of these site. that's a very very very long time in
todays world... and it's not even like they are large images either,
that's the weird part... ?
Click to expand...
2 to 3 secs per image is horrible... Obviosly we dont have specific
sites you visited to actually compare, so I agree, way too much. A
whole page of large thumbnails, small images should load almost
instantly if done right. to view the largest image in gallery by
itself should not take more than a second or two on most dsl
connections (if it was optimized right) . I revamped a website for a
company and all thier thumbnails of employees and projects that were
used as links to the specific pages (not ideal to start) were just
resized in front page (another bad idea by someone) from full res
images from camera and they all were like 2mb each! The page had
almost 30 of them! They didnt understand why I wanted to charge them
for image optimizing and sorting (making 100x100px images for
thumbnails and 640x480 for full) pics

webpagesthatsuck.com is a constant source of entertainment and
disbelief for me. Im not a top level web design guru, but it blows my
mind at what people pay for and approve in websites..
Click to expand...
I find their web site sucks... :(

Dave
 
Tom Ferguson said:
Wow, that Tucker site is terrible. Plain and simply unusable on a Mac
and Firefox.

But, bad design and coding can be done in HTML as well. Bad design
and bad compatability are a problem. Flash in itself isn't the
problem. Even Flash's disadvantage in search engines can (mostly) be
overcome. Admittedly with more work.

I like Flash as spice (small bits of it on a page, not an entire
Flash page).

I'm a commercial shooter. What friends who shoot weddings tell me is
that brides REALLY want to be "wowed" by the site. Why brides are so
concerned with the web design, rather than the photographs, is
confusing. But,it explains why we see so many "Flash being over used"
photographer's websites.
--
Tom Ferguson
http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com
Click to expand...
I think before you go judging the tucker site, you might want to check out yours imho. Like they say people in glass houses.

Everyone has an opinion and several are right.
--
http://www.kevinfochtphotography.com
 
The only thing worse then a flash site... is a flash site with music!
 
adox said:
I know of many users who refuse to install new versions of flash due
to the security concerns. I wonder if site owners are aware of that
and ignore the issue, or are they just blindly following whatever
strategy their web designers promote?
Click to expand...
--

the terrible thing about this is that adobe generally fixes security issues with every new release, so by NOT updating, you are putting yourself at a much higher risk than if you kept up to date.
 
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