So must every web designer who has ever put a GD Flash animation on the splash page WITHOUT PROVIDING A PLAIN VANILLA HTML ALTERNATIVE. Hello!? Are you deliberately trying to restrict your audience to the smallest subset of internet users possible? Would you publish your paper brochure on microfiche, and tell your would-be customers to get a microform reader? No? THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU TELLING ME TO DOWNLOAD MACROMEDIA FLASH IN ORDER TO VIEW YOUR BLOODY WEB SITE!?!?!? Get a clue!
Well, Beadalin, it might be that labradorian does not have a lot of bandwidth and/or a lot of memory on his puter. OK? Not everybody has great access and a fantastic state-of-the-art computer. Besides which, most of the bells and whistles I see on websites are distractions, rather than attractions.
I agree with the OP so much that I am going to bake him a chocolate layer cake.
[bakes large gooey devil’s food layer cake for Labradorian]
Would you care to join me in a little target practice while you eat your cake? I have here an old computer that I got in the want ads for 10 bucks. Let’s set it up out on the back porch, load up a Flash-only website, and see if we can pick it off from the kitchen table with a .22, out the back door.
You mean college campuses enforce those rules? At my school stuff like that is not only downloaded, its downloaded again because the 2nd person can’t find it.
I’ve just finished writing a briefing paper for my company on designing websites properly – for users, not for designers’ ego-boosting. It turned into a bit of a rant about Flash, pop-ups, animated text and so on.
If it would change anyone’s minds, I’d post some of the stats I’ve uncovered about just how much bad design can alienate potential customers, but I think most of the designers on the SDMB are pretty sound when it comes to this.
It’s just plain bad manners and (for eCommerce websites) bloody bad customer relations!
“I’m sorry, if you want to see this website you’ll have to sit for half an hour downloading plug-ins over your pissy dial-up while paying local call charges for the privilege.”
“Yeah? I guess I’ll just check out your competitors, then.”
If YOU are trying to sell something to ME, you do NOT make me work for it!
I work on a FreeBSD box. Steady as a rock, except for Netscape. And even Netscape is fairly well-behaved (if you ignore its tendency to eat up all available resources once it’s been running for four-five days)… except when it runs Flash or JavaScript. Then it crashes. Crashes and burns. It’s dead, Jim. DIE FLASH DIE!
I can turn off JavaShit. But now that I’ve stupidly agreed to download the Flash player, if there’s Flash on the page, I have no choice. Bastards. If I had any sense I’d uninstall it.
Hey floodnock!
Just some friendly nitpicking here, no offense meant, but your “la broad orian” misspelling makes the poster sound like a studier of broads. In fact labradorian either comes from Canada or loves one breed of dogs.
I totally agree with the OP. My ISP is usually OK but sometimes it just crawls. The kindest sites make it possible to get around in text-only without images even.
Hmmm. I never had to download flash-player. It is integrated, AFAIK, into the latest IE.
Perhaps you have a more convienient way of displaying graphics? Should we all learn Java for you?
Oh, wait, then you’d neat a Java interpreter on your machine. Christ, HEAVEN FORBID YOU KEEP UP WITH INNOVATIONS.
You probably hate that superfluous <em> tag in HTML, too, eh? I mean, why even embed .gifs when they take so fucking long to load!
What do you mean get a 56K modem? That’s bullshit!
:rolleyes:
If anyone there actually HAS a flash player or isn’t afraid to see what can be done with vector graphics over gifs (including file size) check out http://www.pulpphantom.com a hilarious parody/conglomeration of pulp fictioin and the phantom menace.
But then, that would require you to have actually watched all those fancy-schmancy movie thingies at the THEATER. I mean, if you want me to watch a movie, you’re gonna hand deliver it to me in my own home!
AT my campus, they have a tracking system where they can figure out who downloads what…or so they say.
And besides, I see nothing wrong with the rule, considering the rash of viruses we had.
(1) I have a text-only connection for my main email, and a full graphical connection at the office for research and SD I can already view images in standard, time-tested formats such as gif, jpg, bmp.
(2) I am not anti-Flash per se; I am anti-Flash-only sites where the fools who paid for it don’t provide a non-Flash alternative.
(3) Why should I be forced to keep up with the innovations which exist solely to stroke the ego of the moron who approved the huge payout to the web designer who had no idea what he was doing?
(4) Java also sucks ass. I see so many sites that have javalinks instead of plain vanilla HTML, with corrupt script that sometimes freezes IE. I have never had a plain vanilla HTML document freeze my browser.
(5) There are many disabled internet users for whom the basic HTML technology was a godsend. Used with the voice synthesis technology that has been around for even longer than the web, they had access to more information, more rapidly, than ever before. Crap-ass bells and whistles and gizmos like Flash reduce the utility of a web site for these and other users, and improve its utility for NO ONE.
Well now, at my college, the public computers are locked down so that you can’t install anything. Of course, the security program is painfully easy to crack–but only for those with a lot of computer skills.
Some of us can’t afford to purchase our own computers, upon which we could so merrily install Flash and assorted other BS. I’m lucky enough to have had one given to me, but not everybody is. Of course, given it’s extremely small disk space, and pathetically slow CPU, installing more bells and whistles is not really an option. So how about making a frickin simple HTML alternative? You know, customer service and all that?
