At the moment, of all the billions of web pages that are on the web waiting to be loaded and used and driven etc, in your considered opinons, are web pages making use of Shockwave Flash technology the best?
Why do I ask? No… I’m not a shareholder in the company, merely a database designer who seems to love every website I come across which uses ‘flash’ technology. In particular, I love websites which have “flash” files which stream audio for you - I truly love those sorts of sites. Out of interest, what other sort of wicked things can “Flash” do?
Are there any flash programmers amongst us who could recommend some fine sources of education on this lovely technology?
Flash is evil (except in certain limited situation). Flash pages make my dial-up modem cry. Flash turns what should be fast-loading, easy-to-navigate pages into messy mazes.
Flash splash pages without a “skip intro” button would, in a perfect world, be punishable by the exchange of the designer’s ADSL/Broadband modem for a 15k modem. Forever.
In other words, I have never met a good all-Flash page, and I wish designers would take into account that not all of us live in a broadband world.
I’m looking for information on the internet. Whether that takes the form of the SDMB, news articles, car reviews, or porn, it is still the end product I am looking for. I wish that all web pages were just text, with a simple index and navigation system, until you got to your news, reviews, or porn.
Flash looks nice, but I don’t surf the net to be entertained by a snazzy web page intro. Plus, some flash pages are ridiculously difficult to navigate.
Flash is bad. But it is also good, in that only shallow people who are more into looks than substance use it. So once I see a page start to load up with flash, I bail. And flash thereby allows me to avoid even having to begin to consider a site which would undoubtedly be crap anyway.
Flash can be attractive, engaging and make a drab website lively. It’s also painfully slow to download on my dial-up connection, often overused (e.g. for navigation bars) or inappropriately used–I once saw a company’s contact details page in Flash which made it impossible to select the postal or email addresses.
Flash is great for arty, experimental sites focused on being creative and on broadband customers. I dislike it for most corporate and purely information presentation uses.
Extensive use of Flash is a sure sign of bad web design. Most people use it simply because they have nothing to say and figure bright shiny objects will attract a few monkeys who don’t know how to read. And there’s nothing more annoying to have to sit through a flash animation the tenth time you visit a site.
Flash should be use sparingly, and should always be optional – the user should chose to use it instead of it being used automatically.
As for background music – forget it. If I want music, I’ll put on a CD.
Broadband user chiming in. I still hate it. I’m a content junkie. I don’t want pretty animations, particularly when they interfere with a desire to bookmark said content.
And half the time it seems to have a piss poor navigation setup. I recall one ultra high tech web designer’s page where you had to SOLVE A FREAKING PUZZLE to use the site’s navigation. I’m serious. Fit the widget into the slot sort of crap. Pitiful.
Well I do a bit of webdesign & am a use quite a bit of flash. First off keep in mind that Flash is simply a tool. A person that creates a site with shitty navigation in flash, will also design a shitty site in Html. Believe it or not, some people like eye candy and nice effects, its all a matter of preference. I don’t see the web going back to text or getting any less interactive so you all might want to get used to it.
Allow me to add my voice to the ever-rising chorus of discontent. I’m a broadband user and I still hate Flash. Mostly I hate that there’s no option to temporarily disable Flash. Once installed, you’re stuck with it unless you un-install. I also use ad blocker software which can’t block Flash banner ads. I prefer not to have my screen cluttered up with migraine inducing blinky crap, thank you very much.
Seriously, web designers, if I want to look at pretty blinking lights I’ll watch a traffic light. If I want a constant parade of images, I’ll watch television. From the internet, I want content, substance, and I want to be able to get to it without having to suffer through ten minutes of pointless animation. Why make potential users wait and (quite likely in my case, and I suspect I’m not the Lone Ranger here) get torqued off at the flash-imposed delay?
Thanks guys for your replys. I had no idea the technology was/is such a pain in the arse.
For your reference, my goal is to build a web site for my band which allows users to click on various sublinks within the main page to stream various songs off our debut album. My idea was to provide one fairly small flash object per song which streamed the tune and provided lyrics and the meaning behind each track. I’ve liked some of the sites I’ve seen thus far which do this (eg. www.bicrunga.com) and yet it doesn’t provide the ability to keep an mp3 or anything. Think of it as being a user driven radio station for want of a better description.
I’m open to other ideas of course.
If you’d like to hear one of the tunes, here ya go… . this one’s a real rocker… a track about a certain famous widow of a certain very famous grunge superstar…
The album is finished you see and I’d like to provide a cool mechanism so that site visitors can just navigate and hear their fave tracks if you know what I mean.
Well I do a bit of webdesign & am use no Flash at all. First off keep in mind that Flash is simply a tool. A person that creates a site with shitty navigation in flash, will also design a shitty site in Html. However a person that creates a good design in HTML will load much faster than Flash and won’t require a special plug-in to view it. Believe it or not, some people like eye candy and nice effects, its all a matter of preference. But they can so see Jurassic Park 6 or the next Star Wars movie. There are still many website available that use Flash sparingly or not at all, so maybe you should just continue to avoid Flash-only sites, or write their webmasters to make them aware of their bad design decision (no HTML alternative).
Flash can be extremely detrimental to marketing. Even with a “skip intro” button (imagine – the very first page of your website has a button that says “this isn’t important anyway”, what does that say about your company?) In general, the more clicks or steps between your visitor and a sale/product/information, the less likely it is that the sale will be completed. Most people want to get in and find the info/product they want easily in the most direct route possible.
Unless the point of your site is specfically one which requires that kind of graphic element (like a page devoted to movies, comics, gaming etc. – where an entertaining, game-like environment is expected), a Flash heavy website is not generally recommended form a marketing point of view. That why most banks, and major e-commerce sites (like Amazon) don’t use Flash, or use it very sparingly.
However, very carefully designed Flash, used sparingly can integrate so well that load time is kept at a minimum and the user interface can be greatly enhanced. However, I find this to be extremely rare. Usually you get annoying graphics that slide out, horrendous drop down menus and superfluous tidbit (scraps) of information that are distracting and are really only suited to those with an extremely short attention span.
It can also affect the universality of your website. (I manage a site that has customers worldwide, we try to be sure that even a crappy, old 486 operating with Windows 3.1 can still access the site.) I would never ask a potential customer to go download the latest Flash plug-in and then come back, because they won’t (I never do – I have Flash 4, a site sent me away to go get Flash 5 – I went to their competitor).
