Memo to web designers: Everybody hates Flash!

[Colophon]

I am aware that this rant has probably graced these pages before, but I will go mad if I do not vent a little frustration.

If you are a website designer, please immediately and totally renounce Flash. It is truly horrible. My work involves a lot of fact-checking. I have to visit a lot of websites. I do not want to watch some wanky intro video - which, more frequently than not, fails to load altogether leaving a white box with three little cubes in it, or else loads, flickers for a fraction of second with a tantalising glimpse of some actual real information before loading again, and repeating the process ad infinitum.

The web is the most wonderful means of distributing information ever devised. It was designed to be platform-independent - you could read text on it (or have it spoken to you through a text reader etc) no matter system you are on. HTML does these things. So why oh why must you torment us so with the promise of information which you so cruelly fail to deliver? Why should we have to attempt to install a new version of Flash every few months just so we can watch the doodlings of your frustrated inner cartoonist?

So, next time a client says, "Ooh, and can we have one of those cool intro videos too?", be firm. Say "No, it will make all your potential customers think that you are utterly clueless, and what's more it will annoy the heck out of my good friend r_k."

If there is some pressing reason why you must include Flash - say if the client has kidnapped your child's pet rabbit and is threatening to do nasty things to it if daddy doesn't make his pretty website - then please please please make sure that there is an easily accessible (ie not Flash-coded in itself) link to a plain HTML version of the site, where we can actually find some information.

Thank you.

[Mockingbird]

Flash can be very useful in menus and in other ways.

A video is a crude and passe use of Flash.

[Princhester]

No I disagree r_k. If the client has kidnapped your rabbit, just let them do nasty things to it. I know that's going to hurt, but it's better than using flash.

[Colophon]

No no no! My rant is not restricted to videos. Flash often does not work altogether. It no doubt works fine on the web designer's 1.6GHZ Ultronium PC, with all the pages stored in disk cache, but for those of us in the real world, even when we supposedly have the correct version of Flash installed, the multimedia equivalent of the white box with the little red X is a painfully common sight. There are perfectly efficient ways of making menus in HTML, so why not use them?

[Brutus]

Strongbad (http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html) likes Flash.

[Mockingbird]

Originally posted by r_k
No no no! My rant is not restricted to videos. Flash often does not work altogether. It no doubt works fine on the web designer's 1.6GHZ Ultronium PC, with all the pages stored in disk cache, but for those of us in the real world, even when we supposedly have the correct version of Flash installed, the multimedia equivalent of the white box with the little red X is a painfully common sight. There are perfectly efficient ways of making menus in HTML, so why not use them?

Because we love it when people whine incessantly about their own incompetence.

[Colophon]

Mockingbird, I hate you already.

[kabbes]

Flash, javascripts, shockwave, they can all go to hell.

If you want to actually diseminate useful information, use HTML. It works. It was designed from the ground up to work. It assumes nothing other than a browser that can understand simple commands. It is good.

If you want to create a multimedia entertainment page, I may forgive you for using flash. Otherwise, you seem to have rather missed the point of this whole intermaweb thingamibob.

pan

[Mockingbird]

Originally posted by r_k
Mockingbird, I hate you already.

You're just trying to turn me on.

It's working.

[BoBettie]

I fucking HATE FLASH. HATE. r_k, you have my full support. HATE!

[Colophon]

A straw poll of my office concerning Flash produced the following results:

70% completely unprintable (sample comments included "string the f****** micro-scooter-riding, combat-trouser-wearing c***s up by the headphones of their Nike MP3 players")

20% "it's a pain in the arse"

10% "what's Flash?"

(sample size 10)

[jjimm]

There is a time and a place for flash. Without it we would not have the genius that is Weebl & Bob, nor rathergood.com.

But it is NOT for corporations. Intro pages to corporate sites suck arse. Everyone clicks the "skip" button anyway: nobody watches the whole thing. And if you do the rest of the site in Flash, making it unsearchable, non-indexable, and non-referenceable, well then, you are a total fucking idiot.

Using Flash on corporate sites is a way of saying to your investors: "we're wasting your money on a stupidly large marketing budget. We make bad decisions."

And the attitude that says that web-users should be "competent" is living in denial. When I'm designing GUIs I always get "well the users should know how to configure that using the register - DUH" from developers. End users are thick, and if you're trying to appeal to the widest possible market, then you have to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

[Neurotik]

Flash sucks. Give me a website with basic HTML. Hint, only children are impressed by your fancy animation and whatnot. Everyone else just wants the information they came for and would rather not deal with fucking Flash.

[Iteki]

Lamest rant ever. What is this, 1999? What's next on your list of complaints, you don't like VHS? Flash has grown up as have most of its more serious users. Gobshites are still gobshites. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Blah-di-blah.

Even the (other) master, Jakob now says Flash is a very useful creative tool in the right hands (while still conceding of course that a dipshit with flash is as pleasant as a dipshit with javascript but moreso). There is a time and a place for everything. Cept this rant.

[Angua]

Flash is the spawn of Satan. Plus, it doesn't seem to work on Mozilla in Linux. Which is a good thing really :)

[Colophon]

I am prepared to accept that there is a place for Flash (and it is a place that I do not ever wish to go). But surely the whole non-proprietary ethos of the web, as originally envisaged by Tim Berners-Lee, demands that people should offer an HTML-only version of their site, as a courtesy to those who either don't have sufficiently advanced technology to view Flash properly, or just plain don't like it.

As for the argument that "everyone can see Flash OK now, those who can't are living in the Stone Age"; well, I work for one of the biggest print media companies in the country and I have no end of trouble with it.

[Colophon]

I should just like to add that the day the SDMB implements a "new and improved" Flash-only version is the day that I burn my modem and go to live in a cave.

[kabbes]

"Most of its more serious users"? Who are they? Certainly noone I've ever come across.

Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML for a reason. And that reason didn't even begin to contemplate stupid fucking intro videos and non-searchable, non-referencable, non-indexable information.

pan

[Gary Kumquat]

Originally posted by Iteki
Lamest rant ever. What is this, 1999? What's next on your list of complaints, you don't like VHS? Flash has grown up as have most of its more serious users. Gobshites are still gobshites. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Blah-di-blah.

Even the (other) master, Jakob now says Flash is a very useful creative tool in the right hands (while still conceding of course that a dipshit with flash is as pleasant as a dipshit with javascript but moreso). There is a time and a place for everything. Cept this rant.

You are wrong, in every conceivable way. Flash is shite, always has been, and always will be. It's use in anything other than the aforementioned humour sites should be punishable by, oh, I don't know, being tied to a pole and shot with a blunderbuss loaded with your own shite or something equally unpleasant.

[Iteki]

Good god could you be more pretentious?

Progress is bad, innovation is baaaaad!
Of course the information should be available in plain html, of course it should be available in formats that reach the majority of users. That should go without saying, but because of a lot of unserious web-devs and companies/orgs that don't know their ass from their elbows, it doesn't go without saying. These are the same people who do not dev their online presence in ways that are compatible with screen readers either.

As for Tim, I don't think he in his wildest dreams concieved what the internet would become.

[jjimm]

Originally posted by kabbes
Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML for a reason. Nitpick: I think you meant to write Al Gore.

[kabbes]

Progress is good. That Flash is progress is an extraordinarily debatable proposition.

[Gary Kumquat]

Originally posted by Iteki
Good god could you be more pretentious?
With you as a teacher, I'd say it's possible.

Progress is bad, innovation is baaaaad!
Try again. The use of a file format that creates large files and constrains the way users can access your site is bad. You may have noticed some of the bad feeling it leads to, from some of the posts above.

Of course the information should be available in plain html, of course it should be available in formats that reach the majority of users. That should go without saying, but because of a lot of unserious web-devs and companies/orgs that don't know their ass from their elbows, it doesn't go without saying. These are the same people who do not dev their online presence in ways that are compatible with screen readers either.
And this disagrees with what has been said in the OP or those who agree with him...how exactly?

[kabbes]

Originally posted by jjimm
Nitpick: I think you meant to write Al Gore. Damn you, and your little dawg too.

[jjimm]

BTW, I think Flash is amazing in the right context.

It certainly isn't "shite". It can handle vectors, sound, animation, interactivity, and all at amazingly narrow bandwidth.

The problem is just that it's often used incorrectly.

[Biggirl]

I'm having a vision. I can see Iteki. S/he's doing something. . . working I think. Yes, working. I see letters and numbers on a. . . a screen it looks like. Yes. . . a screen, like a monitor. S/he's working hard, yes very hard. Slaving away at a. . . something with keys. A keystone? No, not a keystone. It's a keyboard-- yes. Typing at on a keyboard doing something creative-- ah creating a. . . sight? Designing glasses? No, not that kind of sight. S/he's designing a. . . site!

A site with devs? Divas? Wait a minute. . . It's all becoming clear to me. [b]Iteki[/i] is designing a web site for deviants! Oh, it's so beautiful! It's got moving images of. . . midgets making it with monkeys covered in latex!

And what, pray tell, do you think makes this possible, people? It's the designing tool of the future! It's Flash Fucks!




How many times will I have to download crap onto my computer so web designers can show how "cutting edge" they are?

[TheLoadedDog]

Hmmmmm.... what would Weebl say?

[Iteki]

It doesn't disagree with them. It agrees with them.
The argument here is very much the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" one. Yes there are shit implementations of Flash in inappropriate settings, badly done etc. This does not mean that as the OP states "everyone hates Flash", or that Flash should be "immediatly and totally renounced".

However, I love that the web is not only informational, but also artistic and creative and emotional. I even have a love/hate relationship to the fact that anyone can make a site about anything they like and have it online. This is both a horrendous and wonderful thing.

The problem isn't with Flash, or with Javascript or with anything else, the problem to educate developers about usability, educating clients about using a reputable dev (not their son, cousin, aunty), and continuing to develop the search engines and indexes in order to keep the various sections clear of eachother (as is presently in development with separating blogs from other search types).

[jweb]

Originally posted by jjimm
And the attitude that says that web-users should be "competent" is living in denial. When I'm designing GUIs I always get "well the users should know how to configure that using the register - DUH" from developers. End users are thick, and if you're trying to appeal to the widest possible market, then you have to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I'm reminded of the two basic rules of programming, as introduced to my by my first CompSci professor:

Rule #1: The user is an idiot. (anything they can do wrong, they will do wrong, and you have to be able to handle it).

Rule #2: Idiots can be amazingly resourceful (they will screw things up in ways that you wouldn't think possible).

[FordPrefect]

You can't spell luser without user...

I hate Flash. Hate it, hate it, hate it. It is too slow on dial-up and used far too often for all the wrong things. Now, I do admit that in some forms, such as videos it does deliver a decent animation in a pretty tight bandwidth in comparison to other methods.

[lawoot]

Originally posted by Biggirl
How many times will I have to download crap onto my computer so web designers can show how "cutting edge" they are?

Amen to that!

[Evil Captor]

Flash sucks. All this complaining about users being unable to use it and corporate designers using it badly does not change the fact that Flash has been responsible for more time wasted on the Web than any single app, and I'm including Javascript Web games (perhaps the lamest thing going).

If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck and flies like a duck, it's a duck. Flash is a duck, and no protestation by web designers who think THEY can make it work doesn't change the fact that Flash is a duck.

HTML good. Flash bad. End of story.

[JRDelirious]

Speaking on behalf of the millions of us who do not and according to the phone/cable co. WILL NOT for a couple more years have home access to anything above 56K, may I say anything that increases the download requirements is a pain in the arse. Flash in particular. I try to stay current but please, people, some minimal back/cross-compatibility will be appreciated.

But more basically, and beyond issues of Flash or Shockwave or or yENC graphics, which have relatively straightforward (if sometimes locally unfeasible) solutions, my capital demand of with web/net designers/authors/correspondents is simple:

Give me the *&^%$#@ INFORMATION.
NOW.

It's a communications system. That's what this whole construct is for. Don't make me go on a mystery hunt for the information and don't waste my time with bells and whistles. I can take drugs if I want a wild sensory experience and I can drink if I want to feel stupid.

If the bells and whistles actually improve the effectiveness of the communication, knock yourself out but make sure you assemble it right on your end to begin with so that the end user can do something with it other than curse at the screen. If OTOH it's just to show off how your programmer's dick is bigger than the other protrammers', cram it. Sideways.

[jjimm]

Good (http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/) (perhaps "beautiful" might not be too strong an epithet here?) example of Flash use.

Crap (http://www.mcgdigital.com/) example of Flash use.

[London_Calling]

I’m pretty much with jjimm on the use of Flash but I would also say I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the proprietary character of it. It’s not like Macromedia are trying to do a Bill Gates/Internet Explorer thing but . . but instinctively, I don’t like that it’s expensive enough to acquire (legitimately) so as to provide an economic barrier to entry. Hell, in all honesty, I hate that it isn’t Open Source.

In mitigation though, Macromedia have in the past made Flash damn easy to crack. Maybe they recognise, unofficially, that barrier to entry that so disadvantages non-industrial world folks. Or maybe they don’t . . .

[London_Calling]

I’m pretty much with jjimm on the use of Flash but I would also say I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the proprietary character of it. It’s not like Macromedia are trying to do a Bill Gates/Internet Explorer thing but . . but instinctively, I don’t like that it’s expensive enough to acquire (legitimately) so as to provide an economic barrier to entry. Hell, in all honesty, I hate that it isn’t Open Source.

In mitigation though, Macromedia have in the past made Flash damn easy to crack. Maybe they recognise, unofficially, that barrier to entry that so disadvantages non-industrial world folks. Or maybe they don’t . . .

[Guinastasia]

Flash in the right context, is good-rathergood, as someone mentioned.

However, I like to see a WARNING first.

Iketi, I'm SO sorry that some of us are too poor to afford a cable modem or digital or whatever. Yes, us poor peons on dial up-what are we thinking? :rolleyes:

I'm tired of having to wade through the crappy intros to get to the good stuff, and I'm especially tired of having it freeze up my damn computer.

The same goes for midis and fancy schmancy little java applets.

[World Eater]

Why exactly do people loathe flash so much?

Long intros
Non searchable
Mysterymeat navagation.

What else?

[World Eater]

Why exactly do people loathe flash so much?

Long intros
Non searchable
Mysterymeat navagation.

What else?

[japatlgt]

Another 'no' vote.

It's 'kewl' the first few times you see it and then it's a goddam waste of time. 'Skip intro' my eye!

Back to you, nerds!

[World Eater]

Alright so say we do away with long intros, then what? People still hating flash?

[dwc1970]

How about the surprise sound effects you get when you least expect them? These annoy the hell out of me.

[Tanaqui]

Long intros
Non searchable
Mysterymeat navagationWell, as one of the 3 people left on the Internet with a truly shitty modem connection (rockin' the 24.6kps), I would like to add: stupid-ass attempts at clever Flash menus take a fuckin' long time to load.

The clever bastards who invented pop-up flash websites in bizarre sizes will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, mark my words. They'll be there with the designers of most rock band websites, I suspect.

Yes, Flash can be a useful tool. Of course this is true. But for the love of God, have some respect for the fucked-over portion of your clientele and give us a choice.

[Gary Kumquat]

Originally posted by World Eater
Alright so say we do away with long intros, then what? People still hating flash?

Unless there's a reason for a format designed for storyboard style animation and effects, yes.

[LordVor]

Originally posted by World Eater
Why exactly do people loathe flash so much?

Long intros
Non searchable
Mysterymeat navagation.

What else?

CPU hog! Yes, I want Macromedia to spend 70% of my uber-P4 system's CPU cycles drawing animated ads. bog help me if I want to open 10 tabs.

-lv

[slortar]

Really, flash reminds me of those holographic covers they made such a big deal about on some magazines back last century. I think I recall National Geographic having one of a skull or something. Whoo fucking hoo. The future is upon us. Buckle up the jetpack boys, we're in for a ride. Where's the content?

Usually, whenever a web designer is telling me they're going to add a lot of flash to their site, that's like running a flag up the pole with the words "I'm a hack" written on it. Of course, they might actually be one of the rare few that can use flash effectively, but the odds aren't looking good...


...on the other hand, Strongbad is really, really cool...

[Colophon]

Unless there's a reason for a format designed for storyboard style animation and effects, yes.

Exactly. There is simply no need for it. Remember: the web is not television. Let me repeat that, in bold (Hell, if I could use the ol' HTML <blink> command I'd do that too :) ) - The web is not television.

So don't try and give us "linear" sites that do what you want them to. We are the users, and we want to define what information we want to see and when.

I have seen some Flash menus that were quite subtly done, and were reasonably unobjectionable, but fail to see why you can't just use plain old HTML. Anyway, my main point is, just give us the goddamn choice! And then check your logs and see which is more popular, the HTML version or the webdev-wet-dream Flash site.

[SmackFu]

I hate flash navigation because it breaks "Open in New Window" (shift-click) and "Open in New Tab" (CTRL-click). Since I use those almost exclusively while browsing, that's a big thing to break.

[Hauky]

Timeline of the progression of a high-school web-designer newbie, paraphrased:

1. "How do I do garish colors combinations?"
2. "How do I upload?"
3. "How do I make a menu on the left side?"
4. "How do I perform stunningly obnoxious Javascript tricks?"
5. "Hmm... maybe I should use a font besides Times New Roman..."
6. "BACKGROUND MUSIC???? EMBEDDED MP3S ARE COOOOL!!"
7. "How do I make an animated GIF?"
8. "I need a Flash intro and menu buttons right now, someone tell me how to pirate it."
9. (3 years later) "How can I stop pissing off my users and actually stick to some semblance of standards?"

Be a friend, just jump straight to step 9.

oh, and Strongbad is overrated

[World Eater]

I find this very interesting.

Assuming there is no long intro, (I'm not a fan of those either), and the navagation is laid out well, I don't understand the beef here. In fact I thought the platform independence, and ability to have a visually appealing site across narrow bandwidth was much better to html.

I figured multimedia type of websites would become the norm as we seem to be headed further towards an eyecandy filled future.

[Shalmanese]

Put plain and simply: There are some things plain HTML CANNOT do. Even a damn mouseover requires javascript. There are some things javascript cannot do or has to jump through hoops to do. Flash can do these things easier and less painfully. Thus, it fulfils a niche. When it goes out of it's niche, its usually horrible, but in the same way that 4WD's in rush hour traffic is horrible. But it can do some really, really cool things which no other language can do.

[AHunter3]

Another concurring opinion that Flash sucks. Not too fond of Java either. At a minimum, you should have a link to a pared-down version that doesn't require the bells & whistles.

HTML 1.1 rigid standards. If your site can't load in Mozilla, Opera, iCab, OmniWeb, Navigator, and Internet Explorer, it needs fixin'.

Unless you've got compellingly good reasons for using a feature that breaks it, your site ought to be browsable in Lynx, Netscape 3.0, AOL's built-in browser, Mosaic, and anything else newer than 1995 that claims to render web pages.

[World Eater]

Originally posted by Shalmanese
Put plain and simply: There are some things plain HTML CANNOT do. Even a damn mouseover requires javascript. There are some things javascript cannot do or has to jump through hoops to do. Flash can do these things easier and less painfully. Thus, it fulfils a niche. When it goes out of it's niche, its usually horrible, but in the same way that 4WD's in rush hour traffic is horrible. But it can do some really, really cool things which no other language can do.

Yes but i wouldn't consider a well designed site with some eye candy out of it's niche.

I'm just trying to determine where the hate is coming from, bad design or something unique to Flash.

[butter pie]

Preach it, brotha. Another Flash hater here.

Flash is good for cartoons, movies, stuff like that -- features embedded in a regular HTML layout. Until it can be fitted to be accessible to the visually impaired and handicapped like regular HTML is (when properly done), I don't like it. I don't like it used for navigation because it breaks my "open in new tab" and regular surfing habits. I don't like it because Flash navigation also usually makes noise, and if I'm wearing my headphones and trying to do something else when a webpage starts beeping or singing at me, I tend to get pissed. I don't like it when I click on a menu and it starts swirling around on my screen. I don't like it when I click to "enter" a site, and it spawns a new window sized to whatever specific crazy-ass dimensions the butthead designer wanted me to use, throwing off my lovely Mozilla experience and cluttering my computer desktop.

No swirlies, no sound, no fucking popups... if you have 'em, I'm not staying on your site longer than it takes me to leave. I'll click to watch a cartoon because I KNOW what I'm getting and that Flash serves extremely well. But for regular page layout, plain HTML please.

[World Eater]

Hmmmm, I'm basically an armchair web designer, I show my friends how to make websites in flash or html, but never really build any myself. :D

I always swore that flash, tempered with good web design, would be the wave of the future. I had no idea people hated it this much.

What is this "open in a new tab"? Tab = window? Meaning you alt + tab between browsers?

[rjung]

My site is entirely non-abusive HTML, with style sheets and PHP for fun. On the other hand, I just wrapped up a freelance assignment for a client where Javascript had to be used -- he wanted a pop-up navigation menu, and there was no way around it. I had to hold my nose while coding that.

So where is the annoying Flash/JavaScript/applets/etc. coming from? My guess is with clueless PHB-style clients ordering around web developers who are unwilling or unable to point out the annoyance factor.

[Spoons]

Originally posted by World Eater
I always swore that flash, tempered with good web design, would be the wave of the future. I had no idea people hated it this much.[/B]Yup. And I'm another who does.

I'm on dial-up in my home office, and Flash files take a long time to download. That's time I'm paying for. When such a file finally does download (assuming I waited for it; I often don't and surf to someplace more my-connection-friendly), what do I get? Some kind of animation that doesn't do a damn thing for the site itself. It's usually gratuitous (at least in my experience), and all it has accomplished is to waste my time and money.

Oh, and Flash designers who think it's also cool to use sound effects and music and other noises? Don't. They're bad enough when I'm in my home office; they are absolutely unacceptable when I am at a client's.

[World Eater]

Some things I don't understand.

Originally posted by Spoons
I'm on dial-up in my home office, and Flash files take a long time to download.

I can make a site entirely in flash that's much smaller then an html site.

So... long time to download = web designer has no idea what they're doing.


That's time I'm paying for. When such a file finally does download (assuming I waited for it; I often don't and surf to someplace more my-connection-friendly), what do I get? Some kind of animation that doesn't do a damn thing for the site itself. It's usually gratuitous (at least in my experience), and all it has accomplished is to waste my time and money.

Ok, any kind of website with a long ass intro = web designer has no idea what they're doing.


Oh, and Flash designers who think it's also cool to use sound effects and music and other noises? Don't. They're bad enough when I'm in my home office; they are absolutely unacceptable when I am at a client's.

You know what I'm going to say so I'll spare you. :p

I guess I'm just confused, it's seems like all the beef could be attributed to crappy design, and has nothing to do with flash.

[filmore]

Many sites assume you have flash and do not give you a way to enter the site if you can't respond to the flash intro. I work on a non-Intel platform and my browser cannot run flash. So when I go to a site which requires you to click something in the flash app to continue, I can't even enter the site. At a minimum put a normal HTML link on the page somewhere which lets people into your site.

[LordVor]

Originally posted by World Eater
What is this "open in a new tab"? Tab = window? Meaning you alt + tab between browsers?

No, not at all. Because when you open a new window, it's nearly impossible to organize it with all the other windows open on your system, and it's hard if you, say, have 10 windows open and efficiently switch from one window to another particular window. Also, opening in a new window takes you directly to that new window, so if you wanted to start loading, say, 10 threads from a notoriously slow message board, you'd have to open each in a new window, going back to your original window in between openings.

Which is why Opera and Mozilla and Netscape (RIP) 7.x have a feature called "tabbed browsing". Basically, if there's a link on a page, I can middle-button click it and it will open that link in a tab on the same window...not sure how to describe how it looks, but under my personal toolbar, there's a title area divided into the number of open tabs I have, each with the title of the webpage that it represents, and then the website in the "active" tab is below that.

Middle-click creates a new tab, but does not take you straight into that tab, so you can wait until the tab finishes loading (which you can tell by looking at it's title area) before switching to it.

You can also create new tabs independantly, and it's like starting with a new browser window. You can also, and this is really cool, load up the pages that you normally scan each morning, each page in it's own tab, and then bookmark the set of tabs, so that when you hit the bookmark all of those sites load in their own tab.

-lv

[Mockingbird]

Originally posted by AHunter3


Unless you've got compellingly good reasons for using a feature that breaks it, your site ought to be browsable in Lynx, Netscape 3.0, AOL's built-in browser, Mosaic, and anything else newer than 1995 that claims to render web pages.

Lynx?

You've got to be on crack.

:rolleyes:

[World Eater]

I agree with that, there should be both versions available if possible.

I figure if you design shitty flash sites, you'll design shitty html sites. Maybe flash gives you more power to abuse yourself, I guess.

[Mockingbird]

Originally posted by Spoons
Yup. And I'm another who does.

I'm on dial-up in my home office, and Flash files take a long time to download. That's time I'm paying for. When such a file finally does download (assuming I waited for it; I often don't and surf to someplace more my-connection-friendly), what do I get? Some kind of animation that doesn't do a damn thing for the site itself. It's usually gratuitous (at least in my experience), and all it has accomplished is to waste my time and money.

Oh, and Flash designers who think it's also cool to use sound effects and music and other noises? Don't. They're bad enough when I'm in my home office; they are absolutely unacceptable when I am at a client's.

Are these on sites you are paying to visit?

If not, did you send polite feedback to register your disapproval?

If not(and I'm betting neither are the case), why the fuck are you whining?

Turn off your speakers unless you have an active use for them, and fucking deal if you get to a site that has Flash.

[Mockingbird]

Originally posted by World Eater


Ok, any kind of website with a long ass intro = web designer has no idea what they're doing.



Now there is something I do agree with.

A two minute opening intro is lame.

In those cases, I have e-mailed the designer about the design flaw, and that I doubt I will be returning because of it.

[filmore]

And when I am working on a Windows platform, I have flash disabled. So if I go to a site which requires flash for proper navigation (because of flash menus or whatever), I usually just go to a different site rather than download the flash plugin. So if a designer requires flash for their website, they should have a very good reason since they risk losing some business. There are many, many sites which will have similiar products or information presented in a non-flash format and I prefer to visit those.

Of course I understand that there might be enough people who like the gee-whiz aspect of flash enough that they prefer sites which are flash enabled. So it could be that the flash sites get an increase in visitors over their non-flash competition. I don't know if that's actually the case, but they don't get me as a visitor.

[Cervaise]

Please enjoy your annoyingly and pointlessly overengineered Flash website of the day (http://www.geocities.com/thaigingeronline). My director sent it out as a link this morning, offering to buy lunch for the department. The website was so annoying I briefly considered declining the offer rather than navigate the animated menus and worrying that awful music would come back on. (Oh, yeah, warning, music will play on that site, so beware.)

But then I remembered, Hey, free food, and I clenched my jaw and put up with it.

Flash, I will admit, is not entirely evil; it does have a limited place on the web. A friend of mine set up a site advertising a theatrical production on which, after the poster was displayed for a few seconds, the letters in the title scooted around and had sex with each other. Funnier than hell.

But an ordinary website, like I linked above? Those designers will be among the first against the wall when I assume control.

[BlackKnight]

Ok, I entirely agree with the anti-Flash sentiment here. But what's this against JavaScript? I've always found JavaScript quite useful in many ways, for example, simple form validation.

Barring obvious things like those mouse-trailing images that make me want to puke and scream at the same time, what sorts of JavaScript uses are being complained about?

[World Eater]

Originally posted by filmore
And when I am working on a Windows platform, I have flash disabled.

Why?

[quote]
So if I go to a site which requires flash for proper navigation (because of flash menus or whatever), I usually just go to a different site rather than download the flash plugin.

You only have to download it once. (yeah yeah I know updated version everytime - so you DL once a year)


So if a designer requires flash for their website, they should have a very good reason since they risk losing some business.

And you risk losing business too with your stubborn ways.


There are many, many sites which will have similiar products or information presented in a non-flash format and I prefer to visit those.

And of course you may be missing out on some bargains because you refuse to view the site.


Of course I understand that there might be enough people who like the gee-whiz aspect of flash enough that they prefer sites which are flash enabled. So it could be that the flash sites get an increase in visitors over their non-flash competition. I don't know if that's actually the case, but they don't get me as a visitor.

Well perhaps you're missing out.

I'm not saying you should imbrace anything, but that sounds like boneheaded attitude to have in regards to your business.

Obviously YMMV

[World Eater]

Originally posted by filmore
And when I am working on a Windows platform, I have flash disabled.

Why?


So if I go to a site which requires flash for proper navigation (because of flash menus or whatever), I usually just go to a different site rather than download the flash plugin.

You only have to download it once. (yeah yeah I know updated version everytime - so you DL once a year)


So if a designer requires flash for their website, they should have a very good reason since they risk losing some business.

And you risk losing business too with your stubborn ways.


There are many, many sites which will have similiar products or information presented in a non-flash format and I prefer to visit those.

And of course you may be missing out on some bargains because you refuse to view the site.


Of course I understand that there might be enough people who like the gee-whiz aspect of flash enough that they prefer sites which are flash enabled. So it could be that the flash sites get an increase in visitors over their non-flash competition. I don't know if that's actually the case, but they don't get me as a visitor.

Well perhaps you're missing out.

I'm not saying you should imbrace anything, but that sounds like boneheaded attitude to have in regards to your business.

Obviously YMMV

[World Eater]

Originally posted by Cervaise
Flash, I will admit, is not entirely evil; it does have a limited place on the web.

Yeah that site blew, really really blew, but I don't understand this limited place on the web crap.

Point out a html site that you like (not literally, I don't have the time), and someone could reconstruct it in flash. They could easily mimic the look and the navigation, so that means technical differences should start to become the reason why flash blows.

This is interesting stuff, but time for happy hour.

Have a good weekend!

[Dewey Cheatem Undhow]

Flash can be good or bad depending on where it's used. Strongbad = good. Stupid corporate intros = bad.

Javascript, on the other hand, is the tool of the devil. Slows my browing to a freakin' crawl.

[Iteki]

Biggirl, ftr while I am fairly comfortable working in Flash, I have released a total of one site based in Flash. The project was a fully interactive educational campaign for Ericssons internal use and Flash was the obvious choice. The vast majority of other work I have released is fully compliant and accessible, playgrounds excluded.
We can discuss details when you have gotten the hang of vB code.

Cervaise, it's a geocity site the odds of it being shite are extremely high no matter what it uses. Where do "designers" come into it? You won't get any argument from me that there are way too many horrific implementations of Flash, I still however feel that it's existance is justified.

We aren't talking about comet cursors or the blink tag, which fill no other purpose than to *ahem* "decorate". We are talking about a very powerful tool for use on the web that is being missued by troglodyte hacks.

Hi to World Eater and Mockingbird, nice to see some friendly faces!

[Evil Captor]

You Flash guys don't understand. Web users have zip, nada, absoutely NO responsibility to use, understand, or put up with Flash or Javascript code. If they don't like a site for ANY reason, they can just go to another.

You aren't in control, the users are. You're just lucky your PHBs don't know how widely Flash is hated. I laugh when I see ads in the paper calling for webmasters with Flash capabilities. Sure sign of a company that doesn't know what it's doing on the Web.

[dropzone]

Unfortunately, the troglodyte hacks outnumber the good designers by a wide margin.

A letter to the bosses of corporate America:

Your company's website does not exist so to give your wife's nephew a place to show off. It exists to make you lots of money so you can trade that wife in on a newer and prettier model. We both have an interest in me getting in and out of your website as quickly as possible. When I visit it I skip the intro whenever possible. I skip LOADING the intro whenever possible, too, despite my T1 line at work. If your designer did not provide me with that option I find another way in, and if I can't I find somebody else to buy from. The same is true if I need to download the latest version of the software. My time is worth something, and I'd much rather waste it my own way than to watch Junior splooge all over the screen.

Speed up your website and you will make more money and spend less, too. It is very much in your interest to do this.

[Geek Mecha]

Flash: Just another reason to make Vincent Flanders (http://www.webpagesthatsuck) in charge of web design when I take over the world.

All web designers will be forced to pass a competency and taste test before being allowed near an FTP program.

[rjung]

Originally posted by LordVor
Which is why Opera and Mozilla and Netscape (RIP) 7.x have a feature called "tabbed browsing". Basically, if there's a link on a page, I can middle-button click it and it will open that link in a tab on the same window...not sure how to describe how it looks
Tabbed browsing in action (http://www.apple.com/safari/theater/tabs.html) (requires Quicktime). Very handy feature if you like to surf seven or eight pages at once, as I do.

Originally posted by Mockingbird
Originally posted by AHunter3
Unless you've got compellingly good reasons for using a feature that breaks it, your site ought to be browsable in Lynx, Netscape 3.0, AOL's built-in browser, Mosaic, and anything else newer than 1995 that claims to render web pages.
Lynx?
You've got to be on crack.
Tell that to all the blind and disabled web-surfers out there who use stripped-down or specialized browsers to ride the internet. Your site might not look gorgeous in Lynx, but it should at least be useable.

Originally posted by BlackKnight
Ok, I entirely agree with the anti-Flash sentiment here. But what's this against JavaScript?
Mostly because it's overused and overabused, methinks. As you said, JavaScript can be leveraged for useful tasks, but the majority of sites that use JavaScript tend to use it for gee-whiz flash-bang effects, like the sidebar nav menu that slowwwwwwwwwwly inches from the left and plops itself down in the middle of the article you're reading.

JavaScript also wreaks havoc with some browsers -- I can't go through a day without running into some JavaScript pop-up or banner ad that causes Internet Explorer 5 (on Windows NT) to freeze, crash, or go into a tailspin. ANd then the only recourse is to kill the task, restart IE, and try to find the page I was at before I was interrupted... :mad:

More rantings from me on web design. (http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/ramblings/essays/Simple-Spinning.html)

[Cervaise]

Originally posted by World Eater
Point out a html site that you like (not literally, I don't have the time), and someone could reconstruct it in flash. They could easily mimic the look and the navigation, so that means technical differences should start to become the reason why flash blows.Including internal bookmarking, the lack of which is my single biggest complaint about flash-only sites? That's the number-one headache: You can't tell somebody, "Look here for a funny thing." You have to say, "Look here, then click on the spinning baby head, wait for the carpet to unroll, click on the blue drawer, wait for the crickets to cover the island, click on the angry sun, wait for all the cars to move out of the parking lot, and then click on the pulsating Cookie Monster two from the left and four from the bottom. Or, not. The thing is funny, but not so funny it's worth going through all that crap to look at it. If I could send you a direct link to the material, I would in a heartbeat. But I can't. So never mind."

[Mearl Dox]

If it can be done easily in HTML, there's no reason for flash other than to annoy people and to slow things down. And show off. Can't forget the showing off aspect.

I like some flash movies and flash games and things. But I hate it as a method of navigation.

[Mr2001]

Originally posted by London_Calling
I’m pretty much with jjimm on the use of Flash but I would also say I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the proprietary character of it. It’s not like Macromedia are trying to do a Bill Gates/Internet Explorer thing but . . but instinctively, I don’t like that it’s expensive enough to acquire (legitimately) so as to provide an economic barrier to entry. Hell, in all honesty, I hate that it isn’t Open Source.
You can create Flash files with Swish (http://www.swishzone.com/), which is only $49. For the same price, you can also pick up an older version of Macromedia Flash from eBay or half.com.

[Mockingbird]

Obviously, not everybody hates Flash.

:p

[Guinastasia]

Hey, don't knock animated gifs (http://players.gamernic.com/Guinastasia/kermit.gif)!

;)

I hate embedded sound-it's especially annoying when I'm already listening to something on my computer-it interupts it and plays simultatenously, and the effect is absolutely hideous.

[Sam Stone]

Last year I was interviewing a candidate for a web developer position. Her portfolio included a business site she had developed - in flash. Complete with fancy animated splash screen. The interview went like this:

Me: Your design is attractive, but why did you use Flash?
Her: It's really cool.
Me: What made you decide to put a splash screen for the web page?
Her: It looks really cool.
Me: Let me try again - What benefit does your splash screen offer the customer?
her: Uh... They'll think the company is cool?
Me: What about customers that can't support Flash?
Her: Wel, I designed a total non-Flash site too!
Me: Were you on contract?
Her: Yes.
Me: So the business will have to maintain a flash site as well as an HTML site, and you won't be there to help them?
Her: Uh, I never thought about that.

Guess who didn't get hired?

Web designers need to learn that they are designing web sites that other people are using for a purpose. People don't go to Amazon.com because they want to see how cool Amazon's web site is. They go there to buy books. An excellent web design is one in which people don't think about the web site. They think about the information the web site is trying to impart.

Now, sometimes the graphical content IS the information. 3-D walkarounds of products, cartoons, whatever. If that's the case, Flash is a fine tool.

But you know what? If I decide to go to GM's web site, I've already made the decision to visit GM. I don't need to watch a damned advertisement in Flash before I'm allowed to do what I want. I don't want to hear a web site bleep and bloop at me. I don't want fancy little spinning buttons, fly-out menus, and all the rest of that crap.

Have a look at the biggest, most popular web sites on the internet. MSN, Amazon, eBay, Google, etc. Not a one of them uses anything but nice, simple, flat pages. There may be millions of dollars of technology behind it, but the presentation to the user is straightforward.

The company I work for spent millions of dollars on a new intranet design. They called it 'web city', and the metaphor was a graphically designed 'city'. There were actually images of buildings, and if you clicked on a building it would take you to a page with an image of an elevator, and you'd have to push the right button to get to the floor you wanted, etc. It was clever, attractive... And TOTALLY unusable. When I first saw it, I thought "Who was the moron who came up with this metaphor? I need a map to get around in a REAL city - why would I want that as my navigational metaphor?"

Drop the bells and whistles, and learn how to do real interaction design.

[Tanaqui]

I can make a site entirely in flash that's much smaller then an html site.

So... long time to download = web designer has no idea what they're doing.Well, I may be wrong here but I'm guessing that this is partly due to perception. That is, HTML sites download gradually. You see the text first, the outlines of images, etc. You can begin exploring the site before every last picture is downloaded. Unless I am very much mistaken, Flash doesn't work that way. You're basically stuck there, staring at a loading bar thingy or an empty page. Annoying as heck.

[Dragon Phoenix]

Originally posted by Iteki
it's a geocity site the odds of it being shite are extremely high no matter what it uses. Where do "designers" come into it?

Heh - guilty as charged. When we first set up my wife's art site under Geocities, we included music (because we could), my wife's pic as a cursor (cool...), and I have tried to get a gimmick going where it would show some paintings every few seconds before changing.

Now we know better (www.lu-art.com). Still, geocities offers computer nitwits like us the change to make a decent website (after some experience) without even knowing the first thing about html.

[Spoons]

Originally posted by World Eater
You know what I'm going to say so I'll spare you. :pActually, I don't but I can guess: "Spoons, what are you doing, surfing at a client's? Wasting their time?"

Well, the fact is that it's for business purposes. Often, I need to do research in the course of serving my client. I could call the Public Affairs or PR desks of the other companies from which I need information, but often, it's easier to check out their web sites. (And if I do call, I'm often directed to their web sites anyway.) If those web sites contain Flash, it's bad enough. But when they also contain sounds, it is worse.

I well recall the day that I surfed to one site, only to be greeted by a Flash animation that took a long time to download (there was no way around it, and I needed the information there), then heard a big booming voice saying "Hello and welcome to the XYZ Corp Web Site!" That went over real well, let me tell you.

(And the company whose site it was also got a nasty e-mail from me about that, to which they've never responded. Never mind; I've decided not to do business with them ever. See what else Flash can do for a company?)

World Eater, maybe you are one of the very few Web designers who can use Flash to actually add value to the sites you design. Maybe your sites load smoothly, they don't cause long waits, and they don't irritate users. They would communicate, which would be their purpose.

But it seems to me that you would be one of the few. The rest seem to be using it because it's "kewl," because they're showing off, because some corporate hack who doesn't know better has said, "Make it as 'cutting edge' as you can technically," or for some other silly reason. Each time I, and some of the others here, just leave the site if we can when we encounter this dreck means that these web designers are not helping their clients communicate with their public, thus defeating the purpose of using the web as a communication tool.

[London_Calling]

Originally posted by Mr2001
You can create Flash files with Swish (http://www.swishzone.com/), which is only $49. For the same price, you can also pick up an older version of Macromedia Flash from eBay or half.com.
Yes you can. But you’re not claiming Swish is Flash and you’re not claiming Flash v4 or v5 has the same functionality as Flash MX.

I guess what you’re probably saying is that those tools can get you started on the learning curve and even take you quite a distance, which is fine and I agree with you.

But the price and proprietary character of Flash is a barrier to entry if you want to exploit the cutting edge functionality, the stuff that seemingly impresses many buyers (“Hey, I haven’t seen that done before …”).

But I take your point.

[Spoons]

Originally posted by Mockingbird
Are these on sites you are paying to visit?No, often these are sites my clients might be doing business with. Guess who's not going to be getting the business if I don't like the site?

If not, did you send polite feedback to register your disapproval?I have. Most often, my notes go unanswered. In fairness, I have received a few notes back saying that they had no idea that it was so difficult/irritating/etc. to access their site, and that they will look into possibly changing it in the future.

But mostly my notes go unanswered. Again, guess who's not going to be getting the business?

If not(and I'm betting neither are the case), why the fuck are you whining?Hmm...I should have taken that bet. Well, according to Hoyle, I'm not paying to view them, so strictly speaking, we might have to call it a draw. At any rate, as I've said, those sites often lose...my client's business, that is.

Turn off your speakers unless you have an active use for them, and fucking deal if you get to a site that has Flash.You know, after surfing to, oh, 20 or 30 sites that greet me with blessed silence, I kind of forget that I have them on. It's that one that is loud and irritating that makes me remember that they are on.

But of course, I'm just a lousy user, who really ought to know better. Yes, I agree fully that the web designer knows all and can, through Flash and the sites they design, tell me exactly how I should be using my computer. What I should be turning on and off on my machine in order to accommodate their sites. Now it makes sense. Hey, look at me; I'm fucking dealing!

You know, that's an interesting approach--telling the prospect what they have to do to their own equipment before you even begin to pitch them on your company's products and services. I've never tried that way of doing business; does it work well?

I'm looking at this whole thing from a business point of view (not gaming or chatting or other personal online uses). And in business, the customer or prospect may not always be right, but it sure pays to listen to them. And if they say that don't want this stuff; well, maybe companies should listen and not force their customers and prospects to put up with it.

[istara]

Flash is consistently, APPALLINGLY badly used.

It is a shame that it gets such a terrible name, because it can be extremely useful.

Three basic rules:

1. NEVER have a pop-up flash intro (have an optional - ie user has to click to activate - demo welcome pop-up flash sequence of shit if you must)

2. ALWAYS have an html version of your site as well

3. When using flash, use basic javascript to detect non-flash enabled browsers to provide non-flash alternatives (albeit animated gifs, jpegs whatever)

I mean are those three rules SO FUCKING HARD to deal with?

[erislover]

I love watching people get all irritated over things because there's some fucking guy out there surfing the internet on a computer from 1923 and we have to make sure he can see our content.

Decent browsers are free. Flash makes smaller files, not larger ones. I don't know what the hell people are doing but a .swf file is alway pretty damn small. I have a birthday cake animation on my computer for things like Livejournal. The animated gif I made out of the animated gif (I added the text "happy birthday" to the pic) has a filesize of over 300K. The corresponding swf file is 79K.

So I'm not sure what people mean by "take longer to download" but clearly they don't mean "swf files are larger than images".

I've written about a thousand responses to this, but they all boil down to: I like flash. I'm glad it is here, and I am sure it is here to stay. Good.

[black rabbit]

Originally posted by Mockingbird
Lynx?

You've got to be on crack.

:rolleyes:

How would you know, with your head up your ass like that?

Ask a visually impaired person about text-only browsers sometime, chump.

[spectrum]

My main problem with Flash is the back button. When on the web, I want to use the back button on my browser, not have to figure out where the back button on the worthless Flash file is. If I have to learn a totally different set of tools to use a site, which simply mirror the tools already on my Safari toolbar, the site can shove off.

Also, unless I've come to a sight to watch an animation or video, don't pump sound through the web page! Dammit, i listen to music most of the time when I'm on the computer, and thus always have my speakers on. I don't appreciate having sound blasted into my ears and either overloading the song I actually want to hear, or breaking the silence I have chosen to have.

HTML is good. I come to most sites to READ. Give me the information, and stay out of my way. Flash doesn't stay out of my way.

[Mockingbird]

Originally posted by black455
How would you know, with your head up your ass like that?

Ask a visually impaired person about text-only browsers sometime, chump.

Go fuck yourself, you self-righteous schmuck.

The visually impaired people I know use regular web browsers and a program called Jaws to read them.

So, get your head out of your own ass, and stop fucking assuming.

[Mockingbird]

Originally posted by erislover
I love watching people get all irritated over things because there's some fucking guy out there surfing the internet on a computer from 1923 and we have to make sure he can see our content.

Decent browsers are free. Flash makes smaller files, not larger ones. I don't know what the hell people are doing but a .swf file is alway pretty damn small. I have a birthday cake animation on my computer for things like Livejournal. The animated gif I made out of the animated gif (I added the text "happy birthday" to the pic) has a filesize of over 300K. The corresponding swf file is 79K.

So I'm not sure what people mean by "take longer to download" but clearly they don't mean "swf files are larger than images".

I've written about a thousand responses to this, but they all boil down to: I like flash. I'm glad it is here, and I am sure it is here to stay. Good.

Seconded and carried.

[spectrum]

Originally posted by erislover
I love watching people get all irritated over things because there's some fucking guy out there surfing the internet on a computer from 1923 and we have to make sure he can see our content.

Don't stereotype. I have two very modern Macs, with a G5 coming, and a broadband connection, and I hate and loathe Flash.

I've written about a thousand responses to this, but they all boil down to: I like flash. I'm glad it is here, and I am sure it is here to stay. Good. [/QUOTE]

Flash breaks the standard navigational rules of back/forward buttons, reload, etc. It makes it hard if not impossible to open links in new tabs. It is, therefore, crap.

[Evil Captor]

Seems to boil down to this: Flash web designers and ignorant PHBs like Flash. Nobody else does.

[Mockingbird]

Originally posted by Evil Captor
Seems to boil down to this: Flash web designers and ignorant PHBs like Flash. Nobody else does.

Wrong again.

[spectrum]

My question is, why should I like Flash, when it makes navigation harder, information more difficult to link to and the entire process of web browsing more involved and less consistent?

[MrBerious]

Put me down as "Flash suxxors". Always and forever. I bet you Flash fans like embedded sound too.

[Ray Walker]

I loathe people who use Flash for their website layout, or have a Flash intro page. It's goddamn annoying. Flash should be used for making videos and games, like the stuff you see at Newgrounds.

[Avalonian]

Originally posted by Evil Captor
Seems to boil down to this: Flash web designers and ignorant PHBs like Flash. Nobody else does.

Wrong. Get over yourself.

I'd say that World Eater and istara have the right of it: there is an awful lot of badly-made Flash out there. Much of it's more complicated than it needs to be, uglier than it needs to be, and bigger than it needs to be. Flash is often used when HTML and/or Javascript would just as well, or better. Flash is often for things which are not necessary in any form.

But all of these things, from file size to confusing design, are more attributable to bad usage rather than a bad tool. And, as I've pointed out to notorious Flash-hater Jakob Nielsen (to no avail), Flash is just that: a tool. Many people use it badly... others use it well. The idea that there are more of the former than the latter is not the fault of the tool, it is the fault of those who choose to use it without understanding it fully.

Flash is capable of overcoming many of the criticisms people have levelled at it in these threads. Flash can be made to work with browser controls, and it can be made accessible to the visually handicapped as well, just as HTML can. Flash can be used to enhance, rather than detract from, the ability to navigate a site, using subtle audio or visual cues the HTML is not capable of to encourage good navigation. And a well-designed Flash file should be compact in download size... large files are usually a sign of bad design in the implementation phase.

The real problem I see with Flash is that it is capable of so much, that people tend to go overboard with it. It's easy to do. I myself, when I use Flash (which is rarely), often find that I have to deliberately scale back the scope of a project to keep it clean and manageable. It's easy to get caught up in "Wouldn't it be cool if..." or "I know this really great effect..." It takes discipline to recognize that most of those ideas should be avoided, and the needs of the project should come first. This is the cardinal rule of good design, whether for the web or otherwise: what's "cool" is usually unnecessary.

Flash can be beneficial to some projects, and for others it is indispensible. Most of the complaints against Flash, and the many bad examples of Flash that exist on the web today, are due mostly to bad usage rather than a bad tool. I learned from one of the best Flash practitioners I know of, and I was fortunate to do so.

Bear in mind, also, that there are many, many bad examples of HTML design out there as well. Does everyone remember Mahir (http://www.istanbul.tc/mahir/mahir/)? Well, this is a typical (though funny) example of the many horrible websites made with only HTML and images... they're out there.

But, in your blanket criticisms, please remember to separate the user from the tool. The tool is just a computer program or a language. Thai Ginger (which is actually a pretty good restaurant in these parts) or Mahir is just a bad example of how to use it.

And a note for those who attempt to speak for Tim Berners-Lee and other gurus of the Web: the web is more than a source of information. True, that is why the web was begun, but it has become much more than that. The web is a very useful medium for information. It is also a very compelling medium for entertainment, and even artistic expression. In these things, Flash excels. A few examples of artistic and/or entertainment expression which are specific to the Web and are made possible either mostly or completely through Flash: Broken Saints (http://www.brokensaints.com/), Ninjai: The Little Ninja (http://www.ninjai.com/), The Truth is What You Believe (http://www.thetruthiswhatyoubelieve.com/), and many of the Praystation (http://ps2.praystation.com/pound/v4/) archives.

The web is only an effective medium for information dissemination? Please. Open your eyes... it is capable of much more, thanks in part to the possibilities presented by Flash.

One final note... Mr2001 mentioned the unfortunate program Swish, which highlights most of the worst uses of Flash while skipping the good stuff. Swish, cheap as it is, is a program which actually encourages bad Flash usage because of its limitations. Anyone who's interested in using Flash should avoid it. Seriously. And no, I don't work for Macromedia. ;)

Truth be told, though I've had reason to use Flash quite a bit for my day job, and I like it, I've found precious little reason to use it for my personal and freelance projects. I made a 9/11 tribute in Flash, I made a Flash intro for my wife's 5th Grade Mars simulation (it really gets the kids jazzed about the project), and I made a small Flash interface for my wife's CD portfolio. All uses appropriate to the goals of the project. My freelance web clients have asked about Flash, and I've actually discouraged it for them. A photographer, a limousine company, and a non-profit mass-transit effort, their websites do not need Flash, and so I've told them. They trust my judgment on it. So, though I could be considered a "Flash designer," since I've designed Flash projects, I don't see it as the end-all be-all of web design... far from it. Unfortunately, I know a number of people who think that Flash is the next stage. They'll learn. Some of them already have.

Flash has its place, and it can be used well. In most cases, however, HTML works just fine.

That doesn't make Flash "bad," though. When people say Flash is bad, what they're really saying is that some people have used Flash badly.

[spectrum]

Flash, the tool, lends itself far easier than other web-design tools to horrible usage. And Flash fanatics refuse to listen to usability criticisms.

Take, for instance, the old website for my fraternity's alumni. The guy who did the site did it in Flash. Why? Because "Flash is cool." The whole fucking thing was a big Flash program. And like most Flash sites I've encountered, hitting the back button took me not out of the "page" I was on... but out of the whole damn site. And it had sound. SOUND. I FUCKING HATE SOUND. There is never any legitimate use for SOUND on a website, unless it's a valid animation... and animations that "introduce" corporate websites are NOT VALID.

I want to hear what's playing iTunes, dammit -- because I chose that. I never, ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever want to hear a cute little jingle or swish or swoosh or crash or smash when I go to a fucking webpage and the Flashified logo swings in on a jungle vine, yoddeling like fucking Tarzan to remind me that the company I'm visiting isn't just on the web -- it's "cool."

In the end we had to take the website away from Eric in order to strip out all the Flash shit and make a sight that is actually... gasp... logical to navigate and usable.

Any sight that uses sound is bad (aside from sites that let you choose to watch an animation with sound or click to hear a sound). Any site that throws you into an animated intro is bad (unless its an animation site). Any site that won't let you navigate with the standard browser navigation buttons is bad. Most Flash sights I have suffered through on the Net... and I've been on the Net since well before Flash... suffer from these usability conundrums.

Therefore, most Flash is bad. Unless your site's name is Homestar Runner, throwing Flash at me is a good way to make sure I click away. Usually the back button works for that... because like an idiot, you've broken it.

Flash is the BLINK of the modern Internet.

[Avalonian]

Originally posted by spectrum
Flash is the BLINK of the modern Internet.

No, that would be Swish. ;)

Seriously, BLINK had no good usage, while there's plently of good examples of Flash use. Methinks you're overstating a bit, to say the least.

And again, you're complaints re: your frat brother are more related to bad usage than a bad tool. It's possible to use Flash for far more, but many people choose to use it for it's dumbest features. In this, it's no different than Photoshop, in which the filters are massively overused, or Dreamweaver, in which the ubiquitous popup window is hugely overused. Some people just go for dumb shit... that doesn't make the tools that create the dumb shit bad. That makes the user dumb.

As for sound, it can be used well, but subtlety is everything. Generally speaking, looping background music is bad. Loud, repeated moises are bad. Voice recordings are generally unnecessary. However, subtle sounds to key users into clickable areas work well, or low sounds keyed to specific events in the animation. And an OFF button is always a good thing.

You sound like you've experienced some pretty crappy Flash, spectrum. I have as well. However, having used the tool myself, and seen others use it for good rather than evil, I can only say that it's not the tools fault that it gets used badly.

Frankly, it's like blaming the hammer when nails get pounded in crooked.

[spectrum]

Originally posted by Avalonian
Seriously, BLINK had no good usage,

I can think of one or two good uses for having one or two words, at most a line, of text, blinking in an emergency.

Such as:

<blink>Warning, don't click link: site uses Flash!</blink> ;-)

And again, you're complaints re: your frat brother are more related to bad usage than a bad tool.

I would argue that the fact that the preponderance of bad usage of Flash would indicate that the tool lends itself to bad usage.

In this, it's no different than Photoshop, in which the filters are massively overused, or Dreamweaver, in which the ubiquitous popup window is hugely overused.

Heh, I use Safari. No pop ups for me. ;-)

As for sound, it can be used well, but subtlety is everything.

I disagree. I don't want buttons to make sounds when i mouse over them. Buttons should be clearly buttons, and not need a sound cue to distinguish them. My Mac doesn't make sounds every time I mouse over the Dock. If it did, it would piss me off. Just like sounds on web pages piss me off. I want it quiet. I want to hear my music. Unless I click on a link asking for sound, for a video or for an animation, I want the pages I go to to be absolutely silent.

Generally speaking, looping background music is bad.

Not generally. Always.

Voice recordings are generally unnecessary.

Unless its like at Webster's, where they tell you how words are pronounced. That's a good use of sound.

And an OFF button is always a good thing.

Macromedia should require all Flash animations with sound to have a (discreet if necessary) button for muting them.

You sound like you've experienced some pretty crappy Flash, spectrum. I have as well. However, having used the tool myself, and seen others use it for good rather than evil, I can only say that it's not the tools fault that it gets used badly.

Frankly, it's like blaming the hammer when nails get pounded in crooked. [/B]

But if the hammer is poorly balanced or weighted, it is the hammer's fault. A poorly designed tool, or a tool that lends itself to poor use, is at fault when people use it poorly.

[Avalonian]

Originally posted by spectrum
But if the hammer is poorly balanced or weighted, it is the hammer's fault. A poorly designed tool, or a tool that lends itself to poor use, is at fault when people use it poorly.

Fair enough. May I ask if you've ever actually used Flash (the building tool, not the Player) yourself? It seems to me that, if you haven't used it yourself, it's hard to say whether or not it's poorly-designed.

I have used both Flash and Swish (though, to be fair, I've used Flash more extensively), and I can say that the poor design and functions of Swish makes it a far more "dangerous" tool. Swish really caters to people who like dumb shit. Flash, on the other hand, has a relatively steep learning curve, but once you're there, it's just as easy to make "good" Flash as bad. The difference is really the thought that goes into the project beforehand, rather than the tool itself. As I've already said.

To put it simply: Bad planning = bad design. Strong planning = good design. That's a general rule for any design project, Flash or otherwise.

I'm not ignoring your other points, either, but since they're more aesthetic principles than usability principles, I'll just agree to disagree. I happen to like a little sound in some interfaces (not all)... others don't. *shrugs* That's what I said an on/off switch should be used when sound is implemented.

I would argue that the fact that the preponderance of bad usage of Flash would indicate that the tool lends itself to bad usage.

That's an argument I've heard before, from Jakob Nielsen among others. In general, let me ask you this -- does the preponderance of poorly-designed HTML websites mean HTML is a poor tool? There are far, far more poorly-designed HTML-based websites than well-designed ones, both in terms of poor usability and just flat-out ugliness. Does the same rule apply to HTML as applies to Flash? Or is it simply user ignorance in the case of HTML? If so, why the difference?

I think you know my answer. If not, I'll be glad to give it to you.

[BlackKnight]

One could argue that although there are, as a strict count, far more bad HTML sites than bad Flash sites, that the ratio of bad Flash sites to total Flash sites is much larger than the ratio of bad HTML sites to total HTML sites.

[Trigonal Planar]

Guess what. I'm another Flash hater joining the fight for easy access to information. Anything that slows my access to whatever it is I am after only results in me leaving your page. Anything that messes up standard browser usage (the Back function, opening new windows) will result in me leaving your page. This stuff is standardized for a reason. Why do Flash users think they're actually doing anything useful by interfering with them?

Why do Flash users think that links consisting of obscure symbols improve navigation? With a straight text link I know exactly where it's going to take me. I don't have to hover over a bunch of fancy graphics to find out whats available on your page. If I can't see immediately where your main page links to, I will leave.

I have used Flash fairly extensively, but ONLY for animations. And these were linked to with HTML that specifically says "this is a link to a flash animation".


As for sound, it can be used well, but subtlety is everything.


Absolutely not. If I'm listening to music on my computer and your webpage invades my speakers, your page will be X'ed as fast as humanly possible with much swearing on my part.

[Avalonian]

Originally posted by BlackKnight
One could argue that although there are, as a strict count, far more bad HTML sites than bad Flash sites, that the ratio of bad Flash sites to total Flash sites is much larger than the ratio of bad HTML sites to total HTML sites.

Could one? Care to prove it?

Bear in mind, there's an awful lot of really bad HTML sites out there, and precious few really good ones. Mind you, I have nothing against HTML. I love it, and I teach it to new employees in my department. I use it every day. And, as a part of my job, I see bad, ugly, unusable uses of HTML every day. Car dealers are famous for their poor taste and their lack of design principles. Don't even get me started on HTML generated by MS Word...

Trigonal, fair enough. Like I said some users like sound and some don't. Trust me, however, most of the sounds I've used as navigation highlights wouldn't interfere in the least with your music. I do the same thing, listening to music while on the web.

When I was still learning web design and multimedia, we looked at a site (now defunct, and this may be a reason), that yelled "MEGACAR!!" every time you rolled over a button. I use that as an example of what not to do. ;)

[spectrum]

Originally posted by Avalonian
Fair enough. May I ask if you've ever actually used Flash (the building tool, not the Player) yourself? It seems to me that, if you haven't used it yourself, it's hard to say whether or not it's poorly-designed.

I have not. However, I can judge based on the folks who have. I'd say the entire Flash format is problematic. It has way too many openings for annoying behavior. I could handle short intro animations, frankly, if it weren't for the sound stuff. God, I fucking hate sounds in the interface. And any designer that uses them, ever. Buttons should never make so much as a fucking peep.

Even the imbeciles at Microsoft let you turn that shit off in Windows, and they know next to nothing about usability.

To put it simply: Bad planning = bad design. Strong planning = good design. That's a general rule for any design project, Flash or otherwise.

I don't care how much planning you put into it. If you break browser navigation, have long intro videos, and an interface that includes sound, it will suck. Even if it were ten years in the making. If you have one of those three, it'll be an unpleasant viewing experience, and I won't be coming back.

I happen to like a little sound in some interfaces (not all)... others don't.

My problem is that it's fucking arrogant. They assume I want to hear it. That I'm not listening to music. Or that I don't prefer a quiet environment. So much as one fucking sound can ruin my opinion of a site. I want to hear my music, not a "click" when I push a button. If your buttons make a "click" when I push them, I will not be coming back to your site.

In general, let me ask you this -- does the preponderance of poorly-designed HTML websites mean HTML is a poor tool?

HTML problems are generally not annoying. They don't make sound. They don't break browser navigation. Bad HTML is far less destructive than bad Flash, and in terms of the proportion of Flash that's crap and the proportion of HTML that's crap, there's no comparison.

Homestar Runner. Weebl & Bob. Those are the two examples of good Flash usage I can think of. Every single other time I've ever encountered Flash has either been annoying crap, or used to replicate something that could be done in HTML, and thus superfluous and wasteful.

There are far, far more poorly-designed HTML-based websites than well-designed ones, both in terms of poor usability and just flat-out ugliness. Does the same rule apply to HTML as applies to Flash? Or is it simply user ignorance in the case of HTML? If so, why the difference?

I don't think Flash can be used well outside of animation. I have never seen it used well anywhere else. HTML, even when its bad, doesn't make noise (generally). Is there more bad HTML than bad Flash? Yes, because there are several orders of magnitude more HTML in the world than there is Flash (praise be to God).

However, given that the percentage of HTML that is bad is, in my experience, far less than the percentage of Flash. Therefore HTML may be a flawed tool, but it is far, far, far better.

[Evil Captor]

Bad Flash (and Javascript) have a way of making navigation slow to a crawl or even crashing your browser or windows itself. Bad HTML doesn't do this. And there's a LOT of bad Flash and bad Javascript sites out there.

[World Eater]

Originally posted by spectrum
I have not. However, I can judge based on the folks who have. I'd say the entire Flash format is problematic.

The people that use it are the problem, same as any other format.


It has way too many openings for annoying behavior. I could handle short intro animations, frankly, if it weren't for the sound stuff.

Sounds like you have a problem.


God, I fucking hate sounds in the interface. And any designer that uses them, ever. Buttons should never make so much as a fucking peep.

Ok, you seriously have a problem.

BTW I almost never add sound because it bloats the file and hogs the bandwidth.



Even the imbeciles at Microsoft let you turn that shit off in Windows, and they know next to nothing about usability.



I'm sure you'll be switching to Linux any day now.


I don't care how much planning you put into it. If you break browser navigation, have long intro videos, and an interface that includes sound, it will suck. Even if it were ten years in the making. If you have one of those three, it'll be an unpleasant viewing experience, and I won't be coming back.


Sounds like youll be missing out on lots of flash and html sites.


My problem is that it's fucking arrogant. They assume I want to hear it.

God forbid someone tries to enhance the user experience.


That I'm not listening to music. Or that I don't prefer a quiet environment.

We ain't Miss Cleo dude.


So much as one fucking sound can ruin my opinion of a site.

This is just fucking stupid.


I want to hear my music, not a "click" when I push a button. If your buttons make a "click" when I push them, I will not be coming back to your site.

This might not be a bad thing.


Every single other time I've ever encountered Flash has either been annoying crap, or used to replicate something that could be done in HTML, and thus superfluous and wasteful.

Not wasteful, because a flash site would have a smaller filesize, which in the webworld almost makes up for the drawbacks.


I don't think Flash can be used well outside of animation.

I don't think you are capable of rational thought.


I have never seen it used well anywhere else.

So of course it has no use then. :rolleyes:


HTML, even when its bad, doesn't make noise (generally).


You seriously have to let go of the sound thing.


Is there more bad HTML than bad Flash? Yes, because there are several orders of magnitude more HTML in the world than there is Flash (praise be to God).


This is a pretty stupid comment.


However, given that the percentage of HTML that is bad is, in my experience, far less than the percentage of Flash. Therefore HTML may be a flawed tool, but it is far, far, far better.

There have been some very good points made against flash in this thread, however none of them have come from you.

[World Eater]

Originally posted by Evil Captor
Bad Flash (and Javascript) have a way of making navigation slow to a crawl or even crashing your browser or windows itself. Bad HTML doesn't do this. And there's a LOT of bad Flash and bad Javascript sites out there.

This can usually be remedied by upgrading to a Pentium 2 or above. :p

[Avalonian]

*sigh* I suppose nobody even bothered looking at the links I provided in my first post. Ah well.

One last thing and then I'll quit banging my head against this brick wall of anti-Flash hatred.

For those of you thinking Flash doesn't adhere to the Web as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee, consider Curl (http://www.curl.com/html/), a new content delivery platform specifically for the Web, founded by Lee and others.

Curl integrates HTML, Java, Javascript, and other languages. Not surprisingly, it also supports Flash. From this description (http://www.crossroads-osa.com/Research%20and%20Services/CR02%20Briefs/curl_corporation.htm):

The Curl content language enables the development of full application-level functionality and a substantially richer, more interactive Web experience for the user, including 2-D and 3-D graphics.

<snip>

Developers say Curl technology brings the hodgepodge of approaches—ASP, JSP, servlets, HTML with embedded scripts and Flash, etc.—into a single cohesive environment.

According to Lee, as he stated in his book Weaving the Web, the single biggest problem with the development of the web was -- wait for it -- the browser. Or rather, the competing way in which browsers have been developed.

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network."
-- Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996

spectrum, I'm sorry you hate me so passionately, especially for such a silly reason, and without even ever having seen my work. To prevent you having a seizure, I'll now be bowing out of this discussion. Guess I shouldn't have expected reason in the Pit.

[World Eater]

Good posts Avalonian.

[spectrum]

Avalonia, I don't hate you, personally. But I do hate sound in Flash, which is the main reason I hate Flash (that, and animated intros and breaking my beloved Back button). You have not said anything to justify the use of sound.

Why should I have to put up with sound in an interface? What does sound give me that I don't already have? None of the buttons on my Mac make sound. Why should they? Most buttons I push in real life don't make sound, either.

I want to listen to music. Sound on websites interrupts this. That is rude on the part of the developer. Or I want to not listen to anything. Sound thus breaks the quiet I was enjoying. Either way, it's a distraction. Unless I'm looking for animation, I'm on the web seeking VISUAL information. Sound has no place.

Sorry I lost my temper and flew off the handle, but usability is, to me, the most important thing in the world. I don't care about technology, I don't care about power. I don't think animation or Flash makes a site look more sophisticated, and it certainly is the antithesis of cool. I care about consistent UI, unobtrusive interfaces. Flash is never consistent and almost always involves noise, which is utterly obtrusive. It's the telemarketer call of the Internet. This thread has made me angrier about Flash, because it's made me think about it for an extended period of time. I'm sorry if I went astray in terms of my behavior.

[Trigonal Planar]

Imagine reading a book in your nice, quiet room and every time you turned the page you were forced to hear a lovely chime? Well, that would be fucking annoying. Just like it is in webpages.

As for your websites, Avalonian:

http://www.brokensaints.com

This spawned two websites. One featuring a Flash intro, and another featuring 4 floating heads. There was no indication as to what clicking on the heads would do, and doing the "Skip Intro" STILL resulted in me having to deal with annoying fades and morph graphics. All in all, very confusing to figure out "what is this site all about and where can I go with it".

http://www.ninjai.com/

The main page had no Flash on it. The links were clear and obvious. I could immediately see what the page is "all about". I liked this page.

http://www.thetruthiswhatyoubelieve.com/

Wow! Can you say confusing? No indication of what the big rotating "Click" graphic does; no indication of where the links along the top will take me. Clicking on the big rotating "Click" graphic pulled up a bunch more annoying fades I had to sit through with NO indication of where all this was taking me AND just as several people have mentioned before, it destroyed my use of the Back button to get back to page before!

http://ps2.praystation.com/pound/v4/

Not as bad as the others but still annoying. It suffers from the bookmark fallacy that several others have mentioned wherein it becomes impossible to point a certain person to a particular page. Another example of a site overriding a standard feature for no useful purpose.

[Larry Mudd]

My default browser is as pared-down as can reasonably be--

No javascript, no flash plugin, no additive bells-and-whistles at all-- only subtractive ones. No imbedded sounds.

I like a controlled, secure browsing experience.

I like flash movies plenty-- generally, I'll copy the link and open it in the standalone flash player-- or sometimes in IE, which I just use for frivolity.

People who use flash for basic web-content should be shunned.

Same goes for morons who use javascript for basic hypertext/navigation, without making use of the <NOSCRIPT> tag to provide functionality for non-java browsers.

A good web-page should be navigable with a text-only browser-- there's plenty of provision in the HTML spec for backwards compatibilty.

If you rely heavily on client-side capabilities for things that can be done with HTML, you're asking too much of people. Chances are, if you feel you've got to have layered animation with synchronised sound to make the buttons on your weblog/whatever look cool, I can't be bothered to look at anything you're going to say.

[Collounsbury]

Well, it rather looks like Sam's wise intervention has been entirely overlooked.

Pity that because Sam gets to the heart of this issue.

I personally could care less about "Flash" per se - however I too have noted that when I do notice it in use, it is almost invariably as an annoyance, a barrier to my getting to what I want to get to.

Sam rightly pointed out that in large part the most used internet sites are those that do not feature animations etc. as a consisent part of their offering. Rather there is content, which largely means text. As noted elsewhere, sometimes imagery is content, although that seems rare enough.

What I find appaling in the run of commentary here is the tech heads, for lack of a better word or phrase, strangely demanding attitudes toward the consumer.

Frankly, the consumer has choices, and the consumer need not have installed whatever "improvement" or advance. The consumer is the customer, and the customer in general needs to be served on his or her needs and wants, not what's neat.

[Cervaise]

Originally posted by Collounsbury
...in large part the most used internet sites are those that do not feature animations etc. as a consisent part of their offering. Rather there is content, which largely means......pictures of nekkid women.

:p

[Collounsbury]

Originally posted by Cervaise
...pictures of nekkid women.

:p

Well, true, but... that's a different market.

[Collounsbury]

By the way Sam, this was classic:
Originally posted by Sam Stone
Me: Your design is attractive, but why did you use Flash?
Her: It's really cool.
Me: What made you decide to put a splash screen for the web page?
Her: It looks really cool.
Me: Let me try again - What benefit does your splash screen offer the customer?
her: Uh... They'll think the company is cool?
Me: What about customers that can't support Flash?
Her: Wel, I designed a total non-Flash site too!
Me: Were you on contract?
Her: Yes.
Me: So the business will have to maintain a flash site as well as an HTML site, and you won't be there to help them?
Her: Uh, I never thought about that.


What is cool versus what gets us, the business user going.


Drop the bells and whistles, and learn how to do real interaction design.

Bingo.

[Princhester]

World Eater and Avolonian if the parents of the children killed at Columbine expressed to you their grief, would you offer the fact that a modern rifle is a brilliantly designed and extremely useful tool in the right hands as an answer?

No? Well think about that and your "answer" to people's anger about Flash. Then realise how far your head is in the sand.

[rjung]

Originally posted by Mockingbird
Originally posted by Evil Captor
Seems to boil down to this: Flash web designers and ignorant PHBs like Flash. Nobody else does.
Wrong again.
Yeah, Evil should have written, "Flash web designers, ignorant PHBs, and stupid people like Flash. Nobody else does." Now that's accurate! :D

[spectrum]

Originally posted by Princhester
World Eater and Avolonian if the parents of the children killed at Columbine expressed to you their grief, would you offer the fact that a modern rifle is a brilliantly designed and extremely useful tool in the right hands as an answer?

No? Well think about that and your "answer" to people's anger about Flash. Then realise how far your head is in the sand.

I hate Flash, but that's probably a slightly strained analogy. No one used Flash to kill my non-existant children, ya know?

But if I did have children, I'd have to think about the children, and worry that they might be exposed to Flash. We'd have to have a talk about the dangers of Flash, and that could lead to uncomfortable questions about whether I ever used Flash. So I'm glad I don't have children.

And I still hate Flash.

[Dead Badger]

Originally posted by Collounsbury
Well, it rather looks like Sam's wise intervention has been entirely overlooked.

[...]

Sam rightly pointed out that in large part the most used internet sites are those that do not feature animations etc. as a consisent part of their offering. Rather there is content, which largely means text. As noted elsewhere, sometimes imagery is content, although that seems rare enough.

What I find appaling in the run of commentary here is the tech heads, for lack of a better word or phrase, strangely demanding attitudes toward the consumer.
Precisely right. This attitude is embodied in this quote:

Originally posted by World Eater
God forbid someone tries to enhance the user experience.
How ignoring user feedback and dictating what is "cool" is improving the user experience is beyond me. Those who think flash is wicked-cool would be well served to consider that the argument here has been divided almost entirely along the lines of users and designers.

The web is about presenting content in an accessible manner. A medium which effectively disables searching in the page, browser navigation, linking, bookmarking, saving pages for offline browsing, etc. etc. etc. is a Bad Thing, no matter how many cosmetic touches it trivialises.

[Collounsbury]

I would hazard the opinion that our Tech Heads suffer from something akin to the Engineer's disease.

Technical virtousity, dearly acquired, becomes it's own object, leading to over design and a certain degree of contempt for the uninitiated end user.

Understandable but unproductive. What "enhances" the user experience is best determined by the market. There are clearly some uses for Flash and other multimedia in certain limited contexts.

However, they are limited, and people such as myself - as an investor, as a business user, and as a fairly intensive internet user on a private basis - generally want seamless performance based on (a) delivery of content without pain (b) wihtout being obliged to 'upgrade' or 'enhance' ourselves for the purpose of a website. As such, in most applications, e.g. corporate websites, information delivery websites, straight HTML with some limited enhancements where absolutely needed, best serve the purpose.

Even for multimedia oriented applications, the savvy marketeer should generally look for the largest possible audience given the product. Again, that dictates putting only the most minimal (again context) demands on the end user.

In a competitive world of choice, inconvenience means the user opts out, that means lost business.

I recently finished an analysis of a regional investment from the Dot Com era that the backers of my current efforts had engaged in. $25 million into a beautiful B2B endeavor. But one that assumed (a) high levels of user enablement (b) users -- that is the clients -- would swiftly change THEIR habits to meet the cool and wonderous capabilities of the new era. Solutions, yes, solutoins enhancing their experience and productivity.....

Result: $25 million write off.

The Designer is not King.

The Consumer is King.

[Collounsbury]

N.B. The prior commentary should not be construed as a comment on any existing technology efforts in the region nor a formal analysis.

[BlackKnight]

Originally posted by Avalonian
Could one?
Yes.

Care to prove it?
No.

Care to prove this?
There are far, far more poorly-designed HTML-based websites than well-designed ones, both in terms of poor usability and just flat-out ugliness.

[Mockingbird]

People are still whining over this?

*yawn*

[Sam Stone]

Ignoring the needs of users is rampant in the tech industry. Too often, the 'customer' is the guy building the application, who builds it for his own amusement, or to impress other developers on the team.

I fight this fight daily. I'm the head of the UI team for a division of the largest tech company in the world, and our own products suffer greatly. We have java applets where they don't belong, 'cool' features in our products that no one uses (but which have to be documented and supported at our cost), and many, many features that DO impress people who see computers as 'fun' and an end unto themselves, but which just annoy people who are just trying to get their jobs done.

A perfect example is that brokensaints web site mentioned above. Just the home page alone violates a half-dozen usability guidelines - so much so that I gave up on even trying to enter the site.

Now, no doubt people who like 'cool' web sites, or people who see web browsing as a game, will find that site fun. To me, having to go on a quest for the user interface is NOT fun. It's bloody annoying. First, I got TWO pop-up windows, where the correct answer is NONE. I closed them both and tried to enter the main site. Unfortunately, there was nothing to tell me what I should click. There was a graphic with four heads. Okay, I thought - that's four different hotspots that I can click to do four different things. Plus, a circle in the middle. Okay, I'm thinking the circle probably takes me to the main page, and the heads probably take me directly to various sub-sites. So I clicked on the circle - and got the same two popup windows. Grr. So I closed the two popups again, and clicked on one of the heads. Same popups.

At that point, I left the site. I will not go back. I have no interest in playing games just to buy whatever you are trying to sell me. I don't care how pretty the site is, or how clever it is. I'm done with it.

Then there was this comment from erislover:

Decent browsers are free. Flash makes smaller files, not larger ones. I don't know what the hell people are doing but a .swf file is alway pretty damn small. I have a birthday cake animation on my computer for things like Livejournal. The animated gif I made out of the animated gif (I added the text "happy birthday" to the pic) has a filesize of over 300K. The corresponding swf file is 79K.


First of all, both of those graphic sizes are far too big. Our corporate guidelines specify a maximum size of any individual web page of 50K. If you make a page that is bigger, you're going to have to apply for approval from our UI guys. And they're going to want to see a damned good reason. Mind you, this is 50K for the ENTIRE PAGE. A single graphic of 79K would almost always been deemed unacceptable.

Second, why in the world do we need an animated birthday cake? I can think of one good reason: On one of those web birthday cards, where the animation itself IS the content. But if that web page is trying to get across any other information at all, your animation is going to keep drawing the eye away from the content and will make the page harder to use than it otherwise would be. Our entire corporate web site consists of thousands of pages, and I can't think of a single animation on any of them.

Interaction design means thinking about what your users are trying to accomplish, and providing the tools to allow them to accomplish their goals with maximum efficiency. You must consider not just things like their bandwidth and which browser they are using, but their entire working environment (for example, the fact that many people browse late at night or with music playing - ruling out casual use of sound).

Little things matter on a web site. I've done usability studies and found that elimination of a single extra click can cause a 25% reduction in abandoned web sessions. Things like moving the most commonly chosen option to the top of a link of lists can result in huge gains.

Many web designers have no clue just how easy it is to lose web users. The internet is rich in content. There are millions of places to go to. Leaving your site is trivially easy, while getting people to come there in the first place is very hard. If you care at all about your users, you'll spend your design efforts trying to please THEM, and not yourself.

Flash has its uses. Flash games are a good example. Flash cartoons are another. Animated walkarounds, real estate walkthroughs, etc. In all of these cases, the content itself dictates the need for a tool that can display animations.

If the content doesn't require it, don't clutter up your web page with useless animations and chrome.

[dropzone]

(sniff) This is so touching! I agreed with with absolutely everything Collounsbury and Sam Stone said in this thread!

"Enhancing the user experience" and "2D and 3D graphics" do not belong in the same sentence when you are talking about business sites. I want to pop in, get the info I need, and pop out. And having to print out--ON PAPER!--a page because I can't forward a proper link to the purchasing guy is nonsense and leads to lost sales for the company that committed that sin.

[if you don't know i won't tell]

Well, as a budding web designer, this is astonishing. I <hate>, I repeat, <hate> badly designed sites. And ones that load <forever>. And ones with noises. And when I can't open the link in a new window. Extremely irritating. However, that's simply bad designing, not Flash itself. Also, Flash PGNs are, for anyone who has used them, not as compressed as GIFs. I thought they were, honestly, until I tried loading the page I was working on. Thankfully, I always test things before I prance them onto my public site. I, also, have a 56k modem... and am well aware of the fact that other users do not have a fast modem... and all designers I know are aware of this, and treat sites with that in mind.

Therefore; don't hate Flash. Or JavaScript. Hate the fucking nitwit designers who don't know what they're doing. Can't be said enough.

How is navigation with Flash difficult, though? It works just like HTML does. Assuming you have Flash installed... what the problem? I mean, click the button. >o.O< When did that become a 'problem'? Perhaps I'm just naive on the subject, I tend to steer clear of overly shiny sites. Even Microsoft's site irks me. Obviously this thread is about done, but as a designer myself, I'm curious as to what the actual problem is, so I can avoid it and learn to be user friendly.

Oh, and also; FYI, most of JavaScripts more common events, (aka, onMouseOver, onClick, etc), are also available with DHTML (Dynamic HTML). While DHTML is basically mixed JavaScript with HTML, it's slightly less complicated in syntax.

NO POPUPS. Ever. Ever ever ever ever ever. Ick. *holds up a cross* I'm fully with the OP on the popups, and overly shiny-ness.

[Sam Stone]

Ask yourself these questions:


If I navigate within your flash plugin, and then save it to my favorites, will I be able to return to the same place?
If I use extra-large fonts on my computer because my eyes are bad, will your flash application increase font size?
If I want to save the web page to my local drive so I can read it when offline, say on the plane to a business meeting, will your flash site support that?
Can I copy a url and mail it to someone, and have them click on it and see exactly what I'm seeing, or is the only option to take them to the opening page of the flash animation?


Etc.

Just be aware that you are giving up a lot when you use flash.

[if you don't know i won't tell]

Er... bookmark settings are set by the designer, not by Flash, at least that I'm aware of. Could be wrong, though. I don't see logic in using a Flash plugin for the full site; it seems redundant to me, so no worries about that. Fonts, obviously. Same thing with saving the file offline... the thing with that is it's not a Flash thing. It's a webscript thing. PHP does it. Any embedded language, is going to cause that.

Will do. But I don't see what exactly I'm giving up, as long as I'm a good designer, and that applies to every web language.

Anything else?

[spectrum]

iydkiwt, if you never use a single sound, and let me keep using my back button to move from page to page in the site, I probably won't even realize I'm stuck dealing with Flash.

However, given the choice between a Flash page and an HTML page, with the same information, no matter how ugly the HTML, I'll always eschew the Flash page in favor of the HTML.

[LordVor]

I'll continue that list.

If I'm looking for a certain keyword, can I search your flash page for that keyword? Using edit->find?
If I wish to cross-refence something by opening a link on your site, can I open it in another tab/window so that I can continue to read the page I'm on until it loads?
Are low bandwidth (read: text-only) options available? This is not only to accomodate the 24K modem, but also to allow people to access your widely successful site.
Does your site allow a user who doesn't like sounds to save this preference?


I've heard the flash supporters say that you can mimic any html interface in flash, and ask what you can do in html that you can't do in flash. Well, I think the flash-haters have come up with a fairly long list of features that can come down to a couple catagories, dealing with internal links and customizing site appearance/viewing experience. I've heard a lot of hemming and hawing by the flash supporters, but I haven't heard how flash can and/or does deal with these types of situations. I have a feeling that this is because it doesn't.

Personally, my pet flash peave is that it allows each flash item to set it's own preferences. A lot of my flash anger would be mitigated if I could set global "Don't play any fucking sounds" and "Don't repeat animated ads" preferences.

-lv

[Sam Stone]

Here's one more:

What will you do for all those users whose corporate firewalls won't allow the downloading and installation of the Flash plugin?

[Trigonal Planar]

Okay, how about another one for good measure:

- When I hover over a link will I be able to see where it's linking me?

[Collounsbury]

“Yawn.” Amusing, and fake response.

I have to say Sam has had made the most useful and spot on interventions in this thread, bar none. The issue in the end is who is the consumer and what does the consumer want.

Now my experience in IT is rather far from the average here, I gather. I am in analytics and business strategy. I have to agree that “Ignoring the needs of users is rampant in the tech industry. Too often, the 'customer' is the guy building the application, who builds it for his own amusement, or to impress other developers on the team.”

In other words, the Engineer’s Disease, sophistication for its own sake, for the sake of the technical initiates and their acoltytes and hangers on rather than real utility. As Sam says, “features that DO impress people who see computers as 'fun' and an end unto themselves, but which just annoy people who are just trying to get their jobs done.” This is key, for it captures the heart of the disconnect. And I say this as someone who genuinely prefers working on a computer platform rather than something else.

As Sam says “Now, no doubt people who like 'cool' web sites, or people who see web browsing as a game, will find that site fun. To me, having to go on a quest for the user interface is NOT fun. It's bloody annoying.” I absolutely agree.

Perhaps for a small percentage of the universe of users “expanding the user experience” is an end in and of itself. That, however, does not characterize the larger universe of users, and this is true at the individual level as well as at the corporate level. Now there will be the rare user who really understands and is willing to invest the time to know the system well – I got my start with N. AG teaching myself their IP database inside and out – but that should not be necessary. It gets in the way of productivity and imposes extra costs, as well as introduces information gatekeeper functions that should not exists. Now I personally profited from the same in combination with other skills, but it was a real deadweight loss to the company and society at large.

Then there is ERL’s comment and Sam’s reply.

ERL: Decent browsers are free. Flash makes smaller files, not larger ones. I don't know what the hell people are doing but a .swf file is alway pretty damn small. I have a birthday cake animation on my computer for things like Livejournal. The animated gif I made out of the animated gif (I added the text "happy birthday" to the pic) has a filesize of over 300K. The corresponding swf file is 79K.
Sam: First of all, both of those graphic sizes are far too big. Our corporate guidelines specify a maximum size of any individual web page of 50K. If you make a page that is bigger, you're going to have to apply for approval from our UI guys. And they're going to want to see a damned good reason. Mind you, this is 50K for the ENTIRE PAGE. A single graphic of 79K would almost always been deemed unacceptable.

It has never been my job to know these file sizes, but again discipline breeds efficiency. That is the nature of competition. In the online world the user is looking at several competing venues. On one hand search efficiencies for databases are higher than physical systems, (abstracting away from pure bad library – database input and management issues)but then there are issues of retrieval. If your system, all cool and cutting edge, makes it more difficult for electronic access and retrieval than reasonable physical alternatives or other alternatives – recall total process time including log in competes against walk down to the library time – then your electronic system is a deadweight loss to the company. Again, IT IS WASTE.

I would rather blow the money on alcohol for the staff and make them happy than waste it on some pony tailed fuck head who cares about his art and science more than my goals. It’s more useful.

As Sam says, “Second, why in the world do we need an animated birthday cake? I can think of one good reason: On one of those web birthday cards, where the animation itself IS the content.” You know ERL, for a guy who charged in here on a free market ARL platform, you need to grapple with the real thinking more.

Our entire corporate web site consists of thousands of pages, and I can't think of a single animation on any of them.

I wish I could say that about my old boys but what can we say. Doesn’t add jack, waste of their fucking money.

Interaction design means thinking about what your users are trying to accomplish, and providing the tools to allow them to accomplish their goals with maximum efficiency. You must consider not just things like their bandwidth and which browser they are using, but their entire working environment (for example, the fact that many people browse late at night or with music playing - ruling out casual use of sound).


Again, Sam puts this in the real context, one sadly lacking in 99 percent of this discussion, and above all from the Flash Defense side.



Many web designers have no clue just how easy it is to lose web users. The internet is rich in content. There are millions of places to go to. Leaving your site is trivially easy, while getting people to come there in the first place is very hard. If you care at all about your users, you'll spend your design efforts trying to please THEM, and not yourself.


As I said, whether it is in a pure business context, the “B2B” of the dot com era, or to end consumer, it’s the end user that is king, because in the end, there are other options, including walking and picking up a fucking catalogue.

[Boo Boo Foo]

My own observations here are thus...

I own a software business. We make corporate database systems for the telecomms industry which are designed to run in secure encrypted mode over the web. I have 8 employees and I run a pretty tight ship in terms of not going off on big esoteric tangents.

I've been designing database systems since, gee, 1988 I think.

My degree is in Computer Science - back when a degree in Computer Science was actually quite a challenging field.

Over the years, I've settled on a simple philosophy which I call the Holy Trinity.

(1) It has to be fast. Faster than any other competing product.

(2) It has to be bullet proof. No bugs. No hangs.

(3) It has to do what the users need it to do. Without any bullshit. Anything which the user doesn't need, especially if it impacts on Points (1) or (2) is verboten.

But that being said, I must concede that I HAVE come across one application where a small flash graphic was really cool - and it was a website for a New Zealand singer called Bic Runga.

When you visit her website, html code is what you first see. And then, last of all, a very small flash graphic appears with a photo of the singer. That flash graphic THEN streams a pretty cool mono audio feed of one of the songs off her latest album. It's a neat way to introduce the website, and the singer. The music starts playing about 15 seconds after logging onto her site. It's fast to load, and it's tastefully done without a shitload of graphics to load. And the music streams from the website's server, which means that the site is faster to load as well.

But other than that, almost every other flash graphic I've ever come across on a website is just plain infuriating and annoyingly slow. And ultimately, not any more informative either.

[if you don't know i won't tell]

More helpful than I could've hoped. Thanks guys.

[World Eater]

Yes, very helpful. I still think it boils down to crappy website design and not the tools, but some very good pro html points have been made here.

[LordVor]

And here's yet another reason to switch to Mozilla:
Flash click to view (http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info.php/flashclick)

Granted, I've only been using it for about 5 minutes, but it replaces every flash process on a web site with a link, and doesn't start the flash animation until and unless you click the damned link. I wish I would have went looking for this days ago, so more people in this thread could have seen it.

Here's another note about the whole "bad designers" thing: Even if most of the problems are, in the end, the fault of the designer and not the tool itself, it's still "flash's fault". Macromedia should be publishing tools that make "best practices" simple to accomplish and lowering the learning curve.

Take Java, for instance. Class variables should only be read and written to by class member functions, so in the Eclipse IDE there's a function to automatically generate getter and/or setter functions for whatever variables you want. All functions should have javadocs explaining them, their parameters, and their return functions. in Eclipse, you can select a function to generate these templates. To make readable code, there are spacing and newline conventions that should be followed, in Eclipse I just have to hit shift-ctrl-f and it auto-formats for me. Reused bits of code should be in it's own method and called from several places. In Eclipse, it's refactor->extract method and it does it for me.

In short, I'm writing better code than ever before, because the development environment makes it easy for me to do so. If Macromedia doesn't make it easy to write good flash code, then they must take some of the blame for "poor designs".

-lv

[World Eater]

Originally posted by LordVor
In short, I'm writing better code than ever before, because the development environment makes it easy for me to do so. If Macromedia doesn't make it easy to write good flash code, then they must take some of the blame for "poor designs".


And how exactly is Macromedia to prevent long intros, mystery meat navagation, and the use of sound?

[LordVor]

Originally posted by World Eater
And how exactly is Macromedia to prevent long intros, mystery meat navagation, and the use of sound?

Off the top of my freaken head (note, I have no flash-authorship experience, and no experience with curernt flash-authorship tools):

Prevent long intros: Provide an intro-page-generator to provide an html skeleton into which developers can easily plug their own intro into. But the skeleton automatically inserts options to download and play the intro or skip to the main page.

Mystery Meat Navagation: Provide standard navagation objects for internal flash links and add code for them to be bookmarkable, open in new windowable, and have saveable addresses which can jump into the proper location of the swf file. Still allow the actual drawing of said objects to be customizable, but have easily-understood reference drawings available to be used by developers.

Use of sound: This is entirely Macromedia's fault, by employing a system that doesn't remember user preferences. If there was a global flash control panel (for instance) object that allowed me to say "don't play sounds unless I say to", I wouldn't care how many sounds a website used, I wouldn't hear them.

-lv

[World Eater]

Originally posted by LordVor
Off the top of my freaken head (note, I have no flash-authorship experience, and no experience with curernt flash-authorship tools):

Prevent long intros: Provide an intro-page-generator to provide an html skeleton into which developers can easily plug their own intro into. But the skeleton automatically inserts options to download and play the intro or skip to the main page.

Mystery Meat Navagation: Provide standard navagation objects for internal flash links and add code for them to be bookmarkable, open in new windowable, and have saveable addresses which can jump into the proper location of the swf file. Still allow the actual drawing of said objects to be customizable, but have easily-understood reference drawings available to be used by developers.

Use of sound: This is entirely Macromedia's fault, by employing a system that doesn't remember user preferences. If there was a global flash control panel (for instance) object that allowed me to say "don't play sounds unless I say to", I wouldn't care how many sounds a website used, I wouldn't hear them.

-lv

You could do all that and more, (templates bring their own headaches btw), but Macromedia still can't prevent humans from building the crappy sites you are railing against.

[LordVor]

Originally posted by World Eater
You could do all that and more, (templates bring their own headaches btw), but Macromedia still can't prevent humans from building the crappy sites you are railing against.

Not my point. Humans are lazy creatures. If you make it easy for them to create good code, you'll get good code. If you make it easy to create bad code, you'll get bad code. If you make it equally easy to create good and bad code, you'll get equal amounts of good and bad code.

Now, if there are tools to easily create good code, and certain developers decide to intentionally make obnoxious things in spite of that, there isn't much Macromedia can do in that case. But the current ratio of crap to good Flash, and what Flash developers in this thread have said about the learning curve and Swish and such, imply to me that Macromedia actually mades it easier to write bad code, and that's where I'm saying that it's "flash's fault".

-lv

[World Eater]

Originally posted by LordVor
Not my point. Humans are lazy creatures.


This is a known fact? What the hell does this have to do with anything.


If you make it easy for them to create good code, you'll get good code.

No I think you mean......

If you make it easy to create code, you'll get bad code.

Try saving a word doc as html and look at the file produced.


If you make it equally easy to create good and bad code, you'll get equal amounts of good and bad code.

Lots of ifs being thrown around. What the hell are you talking about anyway?


Now, if there are tools to easily create good code,

Not nearly as "good" as the code a knowledgeable human who takes pride in their craft would create.


and certain developers decide to intentionally make obnoxious things in spite of that, there isn't much Macromedia can do in that case.

No I guess Macromedia can't excercise creative control over the subjectively obnoxious content their product creates. Looks like you got me there.



But the current ratio of crap to good Flash, and what Flash developers in this thread have said about the learning curve and Swish and such, imply to me that Macromedia actually mades it easier to write bad code, and that's where I'm saying that it's "flash's fault".

-lv

Well, it's not Flash's fault so get over yourself and look where the problem lies, with hack developers.

[LordVor]

Originally posted by World Eater
This is a known fact? What the hell does this have to do with anything.

No I think you mean......

If you make it easy to create code, you'll get bad code.

Try saving a word doc as html and look at the file produced.

Lots of ifs being thrown around. What the hell are you talking about anyway?

Perhaps if you had the reading skills necessary to understand a paragraph as a whole instead of trying to guess the meaning in each of it's sentences, you'd understand my point. But apparently, you think that because Word sucks as an html editor, no code generation tool in the universe creates good code.

And I'm not even talking strickly about code generation. I'm talking about the ability to write "good code". Code generation of trivial things that everybody hates manually coding (like the getters and setters of my previous example) can be a part of that, but library routines and good development tools play their own role.



Not nearly as "good" as the code a knowledgeable human who takes pride in their craft would create.



Bullshit. Are you telling me that no real java developer uses Swing classes because they can "code them better themselves"? The whole point of libraries and templates and Object Oriented Programming is to have ONE TEAM of expert programmers write highly efficient, highly usable routines that lesser programmers can take advantage of in their own code, without the lesser programmer having to know how to do the more complicated task.

Every computer language has standard library functions. Some don't have enough functionality (in C, for example, you must implement your own linked list if you want to use such a thing), and that leads to lesser programmers coming up with their own implementations that, quite frankly, usually suck. I'm inferring from the steep learning curve cited for flash that they also do not provide enough standard functionality. And that's the definition of a steep learning curve, the more knowledge the system expects you to have, the steeper the learning curve. You lower that curve by having the system do more for you.



No I guess Macromedia can't excercise creative control over the subjectively obnoxious content their product creates. Looks like you got me there.


That's the part where I was offering common ground with you, ass. Fuck it, I'm out of here.

-lv

[Trigonal Planar]

World Eater, you aren't going to seriously argue about the statement that humans are lazy, are you? Perhaps YOU are highly ambitious and motivated but if you honestly don't believe that humans are lazy, then I honestly don't believe you have ever left your parents' basement.

And why does this matter? Because humans take the easy route. If it takes more effort to make good code than bad code, then guess what - you get bad code.

[Princhester]

World Eater you were having an argument above with LordVor, in which you made the point that there is only so much that Macrovision can do to stop Flash being used inappropriately.

But at the same time, you say that the problem is not Flash itself.

To me, those two points are in direct contradiction. You are saying in the one breath that Flash is a good tool but also that it is, of its very nature, one that its designer cannot safeguard to an extent sufficient to prevent it being used mostly to the detriment of end users.

In this attitude you are about 30 years if not more behind the times in terms of thinking about design. Modern design does or should take into account not just how powerful a tool might potentially be in the hands of an expert, but also (and more importantly, really) how it will actually be used by the actual people who are going to use it.

And on that basis, Flash is a bad tool. Period.

[World Eater]

Originally posted by LordVor
But apparently, you think that because Word sucks as an html editor, no code generation tool in the universe creates good code.

I think we may have different definitions of good code. My definition is going through line by line with all possible fat trimmed off. I know of no code generator that allows me to skip that process, and from what I've seen some of them make it far more tedious.


And I'm not even talking strickly about code generation. I'm talking about the ability to write "good code". Code generation of trivial things that everybody hates manually coding (like the getters and setters of my previous example) can be a part of that, but library routines and good development tools play their own role.

Sure they play a role, but still, I don't blame Visual Basic if I run across a shitty app.


Bullshit. Are you telling me that no real java developer uses Swing classes because they can "code them better themselves"?

No I'm saying that people people should have the knowledge to tailor the code to their app, or at least possess basic optimization skills.


The whole point of libraries and templates and Object Oriented Programming is to have ONE TEAM of expert programmers write highly efficient, highly usable routines that lesser programmers can take advantage of in their own code, without the lesser programmer having to know how to do the more complicated task.

You're the one blaming the expert programmers for something the "lesser" programmer created. I know many people that use Dreamweaver yet they barely understand html, and on the other hand I know people that only code html in notepad. Care to guess who builds better sites, inside and out?

There's a difference between knowing how to do something and understanding how it works, and that's what makes one person an expert and the other not.



Every computer language has standard library functions. Some don't have enough functionality (in C, for example, you must implement your own linked list if you want to use such a thing), and that leads to lesser programmers coming up with their own implementations that, quite frankly, usually suck.

And whom do you blame for that?



I'm inferring from the steep learning curve cited for flash that they also do not provide enough standard functionality. And that's the definition of a steep learning curve, the more knowledge the system expects you to have, the steeper the learning curve. You lower that curve by having the system do more for you.

Flash does not have a steep learning curve at all, a point that's been proven with the abundance of crappy flash sites out in webland. I installed flash, went to a few tutorial sites and was tweening away in 10 minutes. If you are too stupid or lazy to do that, then you shouldn't be using Flash.

Sure, go ahead lower the learning curve all you want, it still won't change the fact that the same people are lazy and stupid.


That's the part where I was offering common ground with you, ass. Fuck it, I'm out of here.

-lv

Well you have a strange way of offering common ground.

[World Eater]

Originally posted by Trigonal Planar
World Eater, you aren't going to seriously argue about the statement that humans are lazy, are you?

Sure I will, it's a dumb comment, painted with a broad brush, that has no basis in fact.


Perhaps YOU are highly ambitious and motivated but if you honestly don't believe that humans are lazy, then I honestly don't believe you have ever left your parents' basement.


Some, not all are lazy.


And why does this matter? Because humans take the easy route. If it takes more effort to make good code than bad code, then guess what - you get bad code.

Some people still take pride in a job well done. I know it's a wacky concept, but hey, we live in a wacky world.

[World Eater]

Originally posted by Princhester
World Eater you were having an argument above with LordVor, in which you made the point that there is only so much that Macrovision can do to stop Flash being used inappropriately.

But at the same time, you say that the problem is not Flash itself.

To me, those two points are in direct contradiction. You are saying in the one breath that Flash is a good tool but also that it is, of its very nature, one that its designer cannot safeguard to an extent sufficient to prevent it being used mostly to the detriment of end users.

In this attitude you are about 30 years if not more behind the times in terms of thinking about design. Modern design does or should take into account not just how powerful a tool might potentially be in the hands of an expert, but also (and more importantly, really) how it will actually be used by the actual people who are going to use it.

And on that basis, Flash is a bad tool. Period.

Well I think the inclusion of safeguards that will funnel the designer into creating a certain type of content is silly, but YMMV.

Like everyone, I've seen flash used in good ways and in horrible ways. The same goes for html, java, dhtml, etc, so I guess flash is a bad tool in the sense that all tools are capable of being bad tools at some point or other.

As other posters have mentioned, that are some technical reasons that flash may be inferior for some use, and I agree.

[LordVor]

Originally posted by World Eater
[B]I think we may have different definitions of good code. My definition is going through line by line with all possible fat trimmed off. I know of no code generator that allows me to skip that process, and from what I've seen some of them make it far more tedious.
[b]

Why stop there? Why not go through the compiled output byte-by-byte re-optimizing the output? The arguments you're giving against code generation are the exact same arguements that people made about compilers and computer languages in general 20 years ago, and it's the exact same problem, translating from one language to another. It's insane to propose that one translation is possible and the other is not, people stopped re-optimizing compiled code because the compilers got better.

Generation was a side-issue in the debate anyway. I never meant to say that it's currently useful for anything other than removing tedious tasks for the developer, leaving him more time to concentrate on important tasks. If you want an example of how that's possible without sacrificing performance, try using Eclipse or IntelliJ for your next Java project.

And we do have different versions of good code. Good code:
1) Is readable. Follows common conventions WRT spacing and descriptive variable names.
2) Is maintainable. Code is modularlized such that new functionality can be added to existing program without re-writing the whole tihng. Code is well documented so that it's clear what tasks are completed where.
3) Is reuseable. Common tasks are written in such a way as to be shared across many projects, and it doesn't count if you have to copy the code form one file and put it into a different one, that takes away from the ability to maintain code.
4) Is optimized.

You have to balance 1-4, if you just cut out "all the fat" you end up with unreadable, unmaintainable, non-reuseable code.

-lv

[World Eater]

Originally posted by LordVor
Why stop there? Why not go through the compiled output byte-by-byte re-optimizing the output?

Because you don't do this with html.


The arguments you're giving against code generation are the exact same arguements that people made about compilers and computer languages in general 20 years ago, and it's the exact same problem, translating from one language to another. It's insane to propose that one translation is possible and the other is not, people stopped re-optimizing compiled code because the compilers got better.

So compilers got better, what¡¦s the big fucking deal? Do we have world peace? Has lady Di risen from the dead? The applications being compiled can still be poorly designed and riddled with buggy code, and 20 years from now Dreamweaver will use it's new and improved code generator to generate shitily designed websites.


Generation was a side-issue in the debate anyway. I never meant to say that it's currently useful for anything other than removing tedious tasks for the developer, leaving him more time to concentrate on important tasks.

Important tasks like that really cool long intro I bet.


If you want an example of how that's possible without sacrificing performance, try using Eclipse or IntelliJ for your next Java project.

Eclipse and IntelliJ are tools, like flash.


And we do have different versions of good code. Good code:
1) Is readable. Follows common conventions WRT spacing and descriptive variable names.
2) Is maintainable. Code is modularlized such that new functionality can be added to existing program without re-writing the whole tihng. Code is well documented so that it's clear what tasks are completed where.
3) Is reuseable. Common tasks are written in such a way as to be shared across many projects, and it doesn't count if you have to copy the code form one file and put it into a different one, that takes away from the ability to maintain code.
4) Is optimized.


I agree, but what the hell this has to do with anything is news to me. A html file can be all nice and tidy, stripped of all extraneous code and even have a few indents to boot, yet what the user sees can still suck eggs. So what if the code to my shitty navigation is perfectly optimized, the navigation still sucks!

I don't know what tangent you are going off on, so let me try to summarize.

The design of a website lies entirely on the designer, no one else. They make the choice as to which tools they will use (flash, dreamweaver, notepad, javascript, etc), as well as which aspects of those tools they will use.

When a designer starts a new site, they have a blank canvas.

Whether it's flash or Html is a decision they made themselves.
What navigation scheme they use is up to them
The colors incorporated into the interface are up to them
The inclusion of sound is up to them
The inclusion of a long ass intro is up to them
The fonts used are up to them.

Unless Macromedia strips flash of it's basic functionality, they'll never be able to control the content their product creates to the degree that would seem to please you.

A hammer can build a house or kill a person, and the whole point of this stupid argument is not to go blame the people who made the hammer.

[filmore]

Well, the OP was complaining about the use of flash in websites, not that flash was a bad tool. I agree with the OP. I don't like flash in websites.

So it doesn't matter if the Flash tool is the best deveopment enviroment in the world or a steaming pile of crap, I don't like it on web pages.

Of course there are exceptions. If the website is geared around graphical content like a 3d games site, then flash is good in that instance. Or it's your personal web page and the flash lets you express yourself better. But using flash for a restaurant's menu is a bad use of flash in my opinion. Or this freediver's site. (http://www.tanyastreeter.com/) Don't have flash? Well, you can't see any of the links or the sponsor's logos. And even if you do have flash enabled, the flash animations take so long to show the naviagation buttons that you might think the site doesn't have any.

So if you want to use flash to add some sort of flowing decoration in the border of your website, go for it. But if you use flash to enable critical navigation and information delivery, you better have a good reason other than "it looks cool".

[World Eater]

Leave Lordval and I to our tangents!

:D

Actually I think everyone has said what they've had to say.

The same thread will pop up in a month or two anyway.

[LordVor]

I'm not one to let a good tangent die.

Originally posted by World Eater
[B]Eclipse and IntelliJ are tools, like flash.[b]


Eclispe and IntelliJ are good tools for developing in the Java format, which lead to the easy creation of good Java code. Flash is a format. The main point that I've been trying to make is that there don't seem to be good tools for developing in the Flash format that lead to the easy creation of good Flash code, and for this I placed blame on Macromedia.

I know that there are bad coders in the world who'll write shitty code no matter the environment they're in. I know that there are good coders in the world who can somehow manage to write good code using nothing more than Notepad (although why they choose to use the shittiest text editor currently in common use is beyond me). But there's a whole hump of a bell curve of programmers that can create good code with good tools, but will create shit code if the only tools available are shit to work with. And the high volume of shit flash out there leads me to believe that the the flash development tools are lacking. And for this I blamed Macromedia.

-lv

[Princhester]

Originally posted by World Eater
Well I think the inclusion of safeguards that will funnel the designer into creating a certain type of content is silly, but YMMV.

What a dumbass thing to say. The type of content that myself and others are arguing the designer should be channelled towards is content that does not annoy the hell out of users. You think that's silly. Silly does not even begin to describe your position.

Like everyone, I've seen flash used in good ways and in horrible ways. The same goes for html, java, dhtml, etc, so I guess flash is a bad tool in the sense that all tools are capable of being bad tools at some point or other.

Bollocks. You are neatly avoiding all sense of proportion. Amongst users, HTML is used in ways that makes it widely loved (despite whatever faults it may have) and Flash is used in ways that produces frothing at the mouth hatred from the vast majority of users (despite whatever good points it may have).

To suggest that they are both bad because both have good and bad points is like suggesting Hitler and the lollypop lady are both bad because the latter once kicked a cat. Get real.

[Dead Badger]

Originally posted by Princhester
What a dumbass thing to say. The type of content that myself and others are arguing the designer should be channelled towards is content that does not annoy the hell out of users. You think that's silly. Silly does not even begin to describe your position.
I think you're being wildly unfair to World Eater here - he's not disputing the advantages of certain ways of authoring web pages, he's just putting forward the fairly mild opinion that modifying a tool to prevent its use in silly ways is not the best way to go about things. Personally, I think education is the key. Professional web developers ought to know that flash is not ideal everywhere.

Flash is an interactive web animation authoring tool. If you're so eager to deride World Eater as a dumbass, would you care to suggest how flash might be modified to stop the creation of stupid over-flashed sites without crippling its ability to create games? I'm presuming it's pretty obvious, given the level of your scorn.

[Princhester]

Originally posted by Dead Badger
I think you're being wildly unfair to World Eater here - he's not disputing th advantages of certain ways of authoring web pages...

No and I never said he was.

...he's just putting forward the fairly mild opinion that modifying a tool to prevent its use in silly ways is not the best way to go about things.

No that's not what he said at all. He said that funnelling developers away from creating content that annoyed users was silly.

Personally, I think education is the key. Professional web developers ought to know that flash is not ideal everywhere.

Well yes, you can live in hope that overnight that ideal world will materialise. Meantime, tools that produce good results despite the fact that we do not live in that ideal world are good tools. And Flash is not.

Flash is an interactive web animation authoring tool. If you're so eager to deride World Eater as a dumbass, would you care to suggest how flash might be modified to stop the creation of stupid over-flashed sites without crippling its ability to create games? I'm presuming it's pretty obvious, given the level of your scorn.

You can clearly read when you choose to, but perhaps before getting sarcastic you could do me the courtesy of reading all my posts. If you did so, you would see that by making this comment you are just continuing to emphasise why Flash is a bad tool.

[Dead Badger]

Well, I have read all of your posts, and am at a loss as to where you think you got into specifics. There was the hitler analogy, and the columbine analogy, a comment about bunny rabbits and then one where you say that tool designers should not only be concerned about how a tool will be used by experts, but how it will be used by morons. This is all very well, but it really doesn't explain how one might go about creating a flexible interactive content tool without enabling some really shitty design. I apologise if I've missed such specifics, but I really can't see them, to be honest.

I'll try an analogy of my own. Hammers are immensely useful for banging in nails. When used by morons, however, they have a tendency to shatter thumbs. One could fix this problem by making the hammers all squishy so it doesn't hurt when morons use them, but their essential hammerishness is rather diminished by this change, wouldn't you agree? Experts will always need a heavy, hard thing to make pointy things go into flat things. The morons will see the wonderful things achievable when pointy things go into flat things, and will want to try it too. Monkey see, monkey do. Blaming experts and hammers for the existence of morons is simply the wrong approach.

A large reason why bad sites (in all formats) exist, IMO, is that in many cases there is not a clear enough link between the website and the revenue stream for companies/individuals to actually consider the effect of their website beyond its image and how it reflects their company. This is borne out by Sam Stone's earlier examples - the companies that rely 100% on their website for revenue (amazon, ebay, google) have clean, well-designed sites. By contrast, the Royal Albert Hall sells a tiny minority of its tickets through its website, and as a consequence has come up with this (http://www.royalalberthall.co.uk/rah/index.jsp) monstrosity. Now tell me; what specific features of flash should be disabled to prevent that misuse, while not ruining the tool for sites like weebl and bob, or that nice game site whose name I've forgotten with the funky music and the bees.

[World Eater]

Originally posted by LordVor
IThe main point that I've been trying to make is that there don't seem to be good tools for developing in the Flash format that lead to the easy creation of good Flash code, and for this I placed blame on Macromedia.


Well seeing that.........
Originally posted by LordVor
<snip>(note, I have no flash-authorship experience, and no experience with curernt flash-authorship tools):</snip>
.....how would you know if the tools are good or not? You've never used or even seen them.



I know that there are bad coders in the world who'll write shitty code no matter the environment they're in. I know that there are good coders in the world who can somehow manage to write good code using nothing more than Notepad (although why they choose to use the shittiest text editor currently in common use is beyond me). But there's a whole hump of a bell curve of programmers that can create good code with good tools, but will create shit code if the only tools available are shit to work with. And the high volume of shit flash out there leads me to believe that the the flash development tools are lacking. And for this I blamed Macromedia. -lv

I agree with 87% of this, however in regards to flash, you are wrong, the development evironment is just fine.

If %100 of all instances sucked you might have a point, but they don't and you don't.

[World Eater]

Originally posted by Princhester

What a dumbass thing to say. The type of content that myself and others are arguing the designer should be channelled towards is content that does not annoy the hell out of users. You think that's silly. Silly does not even begin to describe your position.


I got news for you, if a designer is so stupid as too add a one minute intro with sound to a website, then ain't so safeguard in the world will morph him into being a better designer.

Limitations, even well intended ones, will only affect the good designers.

[LordVor]

I think WE and I have gotten as far as we can, but I do want to provide an answer to this all-powerful hammer analogy with a parable.

Ralph the clumsy oaf works on the roof of a 10-story building in a densely populated area. He pounds things flat with his hammer up there, every day. And, being a clumsy oaf, he drops a hammer off of the roof at least twice a day. He knows that he goes through a lot of hammers that way, but he knows of no other way to do his job, for he is also somewhat dim-witted.

Well, the pedestrians who have to walk next to the building decided to complain to Ralph.

"Ralph!" they say, "Quit dropping hammers on us! You killed 4 men last week!"

"Impossible" says Ralph, "I need my hammer to do my work, and I cannot keep from dropping it repeatedly, for I am a clumsy oaf. Perhaps you should just look up more often while walking under my building, so you can better avoid my hammers. I am too dim-witted to think of a better solution."

So then the pedestrians go to Ralph's hammer suppliers, and explain to them that Ralph is not fit to hold a hammer.

"Sorry," the suppliers say, "Ralph is one of our best customers. He buys a dozen hammers a week! I must continue to sell him hammers."

"Is there not SOMETHING you can do to make Ralph more safe? For we shall surely kill him ourselves is something is not done to stop him, and then you will be completely without a customer."

"Well, if you put it that way..." says the supplier, "I can tie a string to the hammer! Then Ralph can tie the other end to his hand! He will still be able to use the hammer in the same manner, but the string will catch it when he drops it, and it will not kill anybody, and I will find something else to sell to Ralph, for he is not too bright and will buy anything I tell him to."

Ralph liked the idea, because the pedestrians no longer hated him, and he no longer lost so many hammers, so it was worth it to spend more money on a hammer with a string. The pedestrians liked it because they were no longer getting killed, and, once their anger went away, came to realize that they liked Ralph's flat things. And they lived happily ever after.

And I don't know what flash's "string" would be, although having a little wizard pop-up and scream at the developer "You stupid idiot, you're putting in a 1 minute intro with sound that a user will have to watch the whole of before they get to any content! Users hate that! Don't do it! Let me show you how to make it optional instead!" would certainly cut down on the number of 1 minute intros with sound on the web.

-lv

[World Eater]

Originally posted by LordVor
And I don't know what flash's "string" would be, although having a little wizard pop-up and scream at the developer "You stupid idiot, you're putting in a 1 minute intro with sound that a user will have to watch the whole of before they get to any content! Users hate that! Don't do it! Let me show you how to make it optional instead!" would certainly cut down on the number of 1 minute intros with sound on the web.

-lv

Sure a warning messagebox would be nice. You could also get someone more competent then Ralph to work on the roof.

:p

[rjung]

Ah, but the problem is that, in reality, once Ralph gets his new hammer-with-a-string, he'll find that the string chafes his wrist, and either (1) doesn't tie the string to his wrist, or (2) snips it off all together.

[Princhester]

It's really very simple, when you stop making excuses for your hobby horse and just stand back and get some perspective.

1/ the developers that have built the WWW (good, bad, indifferent, I don't care, just the ones that exist, not the ideal ones, not particularly the experts, not particularly the morons, just the actual real life ones out there) use HTML

2/ the developers that have built the WWW (good, bad, indifferent, I don't care, just the ones that exist, not the ideal ones, not particularly the experts, not particularly the morons, just the actual real life ones out there) use Flash

3/ users like the results of 1/. The result of 2/ is users with steam coming out of their ears in frustration and anger

4/ you will note that only the tool (Flash) changes between 1/ and 2/

5/ assuming you give a damn about users opinions (an assumption that might well not be justified in relation to certain posters in this thread) the inescapable conclusion is that Flash is bad.

Whining that it can be used well is not the point. Whining that there is no way that Flash could be improved emphasises how bad it is (ie irredeemably). Whining that without Flash, cool sounds and animation etc would not be possible is something that most users (see above) could not give a damn about.

Originally posted by Dead Badger
Well, I have read all of your posts, and am at a loss as to where you think you got into specifics.

I haven't. I don't have to. I'm not Macrovision, I have no need to solve its problems. I am a user. What concerns me is that Macrovision's tool results in my pain, I don't give a damn what they do to resolve the problems their tool has. I don't give a damn if those problems are unresolvable resulting in their product being consigned to the dustbin of annoying technology.

and then one where you say that tool designers should not only be concerned about how a tool will be used by experts, but how it will be used by morons.

Never said that. Your obtuseness is, however, obvious from the manner in which you distort what I say. You clearly are quite unable to come to grips with what users have to face: bad content which overwhelmingly comes from Flash and not from HTML. Deal with it and stop trying to pretend (by distorting what I say) that the problem is limited to developers who are clinically mentally deficient.

This is all very well, but it really doesn't explain how one might go about creating a flexible interactive content tool without enabling some really shitty design. I apologise if I've missed such specifics, but I really can't see them, to be honest.

See above. See if I give a shit.

I'll try an analogy of my own. Hammers are immensely useful for banging in nails. When used by morons, however, they have a tendency to shatter thumbs. One could fix this problem by making the hammers all squishy so it doesn't hurt when morons use them, but their essential hammerishness is rather diminished by this change, wouldn't you agree? Experts will always need a heavy, hard thing to make pointy things go into flat things. The morons will see the wonderful things achievable when pointy things go into flat things, and will want to try it too. Monkey see, monkey do.

If you take away the distortions of reality inherent in your analogy, it is actually quite a useful demonstration of where you are going wrong.

A hammer passes certain tests. Firstly, is it very useful? Yes, it is an indispensably useful tool, for doing jobs that have to be done.

Secondly, is a hammer safe and annoying to users? Your exaggeration aside, a hammer is pretty safe and doesn't annoy users that much if at all. I'm a complete klutz, and also someone who does a lot of amateur carpentry (don't buy an old wooden house. Just don't do it. :)). But even I don't hit myself on the thumb very often. And when I do, (your bullshit about shattered thumbs aside) all that results is a bruise. Overall, I don't mind hammers, and I don't know anyone who does.

Thirdly, if you don't like hammers, are you likely to have them foisted on you? No, you'll probably just stay away from doing carpentry.

Let's apply that three tier test to Flash

Is it an indispensably useful tool? Don't make me laugh.

Does it annoy users much? Is the pope catholic? Have you read this thread?

Is it foisted on people who don't like it? Yessiree Bob. That's one of the most annoying aspects.

Flash is a bad tool. Hammers are a good tool.

A large reason why bad sites (in all formats) exist, IMO, is that in many cases there is not a clear enough link between the website and the revenue stream for companies/individuals to actually consider the effect of their website beyond its image and how it reflects their company. This is borne out by Sam Stone's earlier examples - the companies that rely 100% on their website for revenue (amazon, ebay, google) have clean, well-designed sites. By contrast, the Royal Albert Hall sells a tiny minority of its tickets through its website, and as a consequence has come up with this (http://www.royalalberthall.co.uk/rah/index.jsp) monstrosity. Now tell me; what specific features of flash should be disabled to prevent that misuse, while not ruining the tool for sites like weebl and bob, or that nice game site whose name I've forgotten with the funky music and the bees.

All of it, for all I care.

[Dead Badger]

For crying out loud - if you bothered to read back through the thread, you'd see that I don't like the predominant usage of flash. As a navigational and content-management tool, it's no good, just as a hammer is no good for making scrambled eggs. However, I am capable of acknowledging that it does have certain uses for which it is eminently suited, namely animation and games. You seem either unable to do this or willing to completely ignore them in the interests of getting your way. Well, fine, but it's hardly the most pragmatic approach, don't you think?

Basically, you are proposing the emasculation of a tool which has genuine use (and how you're going to force Macromedia to hobble their product is beyond me), while I am proposing using standards and best practice guidelines to discourage the use of flash where it is inappropriate. I know which of these sounds like a hobby horse to me.

I have asked how you would go about designing an animation package that can't be used to create interstitial nightmares, but instead you prefer to claim that I'm twisting your words and claim that no-one will miss any features of flash were it gone. Well, I'm sorry to tell you but there are people who like flash games, there are people who like Weebl and Bob, and rathergood.com etc. etc. etc. and as long as there are people who want something, it will be supplied. If in some bizarro-world you did manage to get flash banned, do you really think that nothing will replace it?

And to think you're telling me to get a sense of perspective.

[World Eater]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Princhester
What concerns me is that Macrovision's tool results in my pain,[quote]

Yes being reduced to watching a rainbow colored version of Robocop does suck.

Get back to me when you actually know the name of the company you are railing against m'kay?

[Princhester]

World Eater, when your best argument is get hoity toity and smartarse over a typo in your opponent's post, you've lost, pal.

[Princhester]

Originally posted by Dead Badger
For crying out loud - if you bothered to read back through the thread, you'd see that I don't like the predominant usage of flash.

And I said you did when?

As a navigational and content-management tool, it's no good, just as a hammer is no good for making scrambled eggs.

Indeed. But think about this for a second. What would happen if you put up a pit thread entitled "memo to carpenters: everybody hates hammers!" and then whined about how you were so sick of hammers being used to scramble eggs?

Now observe this thread. Note a difference. What conclusion, pray, do you draw from that?

However, I am capable of acknowledging that it does have certain uses for which it is eminently suited, namely animation and games. You seem either unable to do this or willing to completely ignore them in the interests of getting your way. Well, fine, but it's hardly the most pragmatic approach, don't you think?

I am quite able to understand the trivial frippery that Flash is capable of. I even quite enjoy some of it. Which would upset me more: that I might miss out on that enjoyment if Flash vanished from my life or that I have to put up with the crap that Flash is actually mostly used for? The latter. And going by this thread, I am far from alone.

I would call that a very pragmatic approach.

Basically, you are proposing the emasculation of a tool which has genuine use (and how you're going to force Macromedia to hobble their product is beyond me) [another Dead Badger straw man special] while I am proposing using standards and best practice guidelines to discourage the use of flash where it is inappropriate. I know which of these sounds like a hobby horse to me.

[My comment added in italics]

I don't care what you advocate as long as it turns Flash from a good to a bad product, from a user's point of view. Others have suggested (I though you included, perhaps not) that "morons" (as you call them) are always going to produce annoying stuff with Flash, and that there was nothing to be done about that.

Now you appear to be suggesting that a bit of standards tightening etc and the problem will go away. I think you're dreaming, but good luck to you. In the meantime, until Macromedia or the web designer world implements changes that work, Flash will remain in my judgement a bad product.

I have asked how you would go about designing an animation package that can't be used to create interstitial nightmares, but instead you prefer to claim that I'm twisting your words [which is unsurprising given that that is what you were doing]and claim that no-one will miss any features of flash were it gone. Well, I'm sorry to tell you but there are people who like flash games, there are people who like Weebl and Bob, and rathergood.com etc. etc. etc. and as long as there are people who want something, it will be supplied. If in some bizarro-world you did manage to get flash banned, do you really think that nothing will replace it?

[my comment added in italics]

The only bizarro world around here is the one in which you think that I ever suggested that Flash was going to go away, or in which I stated that I thought I could get it banned. I just don't like it, and I think it is a bad product, neither proposition of which you have made a dent upon.

Truly impressive is your ability to beat up straw men, just a shame you are not able to do more.