[color=seagreen]Rants/comments/agree/disagree?[/color] [color=#2e8b57][/color]
I agree that most users don’t necessarily have flash, but I’d expect people at kirupa to disagree with that article…So, what do you guys think?
[url=“http://digital-web.com/articles/when_design_motivates/”]
didn’t get a chance to read the article, but MM’s site says 90 something percent of pc users already have the flash player installed on their computer, so i say bah!
Reagarding the article… i was on the defensive for most of the way through, but i think the author is trying to make some valid points, while dealing with a touchy topic.
I agree that not all of the web wants Flashy motion design, but alas, I personally do not design for all of the web! I design for myself, and subsequently, my clients, and we all agree, that Flash is catchy, and when done properly, trumps a static HTML site in presentation (although maybe not in ease of use for the lamen).
NOTE: Macromedia’s statements are misleading. the 90% number represents the percentage of people who can view Flash files without Downloading it from the web, meaning that 90% of people have Flash on their computer, whether installed, or not…
Kind of misleading, but a higher number than say, ‘percentage of users who have the most current version of Flash installed already’
it means that somewhere they have the FlashPlayer.exe installer on their computer, whether its in some obscure IE folder, or somewhere else… its a tricky use of words…
In March 2004, NPD Research, the parent company of MediaMetrix, conducted a study to determine what percentage of Web browsers have Macromedia Flash preinstalled. The results show that 98.0% of Web users can experience Macromedia Flash content without having to download and install a player.
The idea of a website is to display information with a neat and simple presentation, Flash can do this just as well as HTML. This guy is forgetting, its not the software, its the designers using the software. A designer can make an HTML site just as confusing as a designer using Flash.
Download times for most flash sites are pretty long and when done, present the same or even less info than thier HTML counterparts. Remember some people still use dial-up connections(56kbps or less!)
2advanced.com and billybussey.com are not most Flash sites. Someone that ACTUALLY knows Flash can usually distribute something with a smaller footprint than html, it’s just the tendency to pretty the heck out of it which makes it prohibitively expensive on the bandwidth.
*I am not saying that 2advanced and billybussey don’t know Flash. They are building sites for a particular niche market. When taking into context the delivery of information only, what I’ve said above applies.
html graphics may need to reload whole pages and the whole layout over and over, while, in flash, if you use external files, once you load the main layout… your done (am i right or not?)
If you want to look at Flash adoption and acceptance, the first thing you have to do is stop looking for examples in the design community. It’s inherantly biased.
Look at the Fortune 500 companies and the largest websites, and see what they’re using. Look at Microsoft (Flash all over on MSN.com and Hotmail.com), look at Ford (lots of flash), look at GM, look at Yahoo (who both uses and allows Flash advertisements).
Flash certainly isn’t required, but it’s definitely common enough that large sites aren’t afraid to use it. If you think your readership is more diverse than Yahoo or Hotmail … well, you’re probably in an Engineering community and know how to make sites that you can read in a 80x24 xterm.
some things in this article are right and made me think about!
for official homepages where the content is very important i would say a mix between flash and html is reasonable(for example the navigation with a slight motion, but not TOO much) and the other ~75% in html.
I agree on that point that flash motions can be tricky sometimes. but i think the right balance of static and dynamic content is the key to impress and inform your visitors.
if a designer designs his personal homepage there should be no limits for him neither if he does everything in flash nor everithing in html or mixed.
Flash is just stained because many ads are made of it too. this annoys me!!
i agree with the point about visitors having to put up with all the extra animation…
imo the point of a flash site would be to show off your skills as a designer, to show off what you can do with flash (doesn’t have to be a website).
the other times when flash comes in would be when making an interactive section, eg games or a build-your-own-stuff kinda section, or those viewport stuff.
currently i’m reluctant to put up a flash version of my website, as the only thing i have up is my portfolio/latest works…and that’s all my visitors need to see.
kinda offtopic but proves the point: PPl have come to me saying that Firefox sux bcuz the website displays a flash animation in IE but an image in FF (lol look which one they wanna see now ) and I keep syaing that it’s the dumb designer’s fault not FF! Who knows for what kind of weird reasons that webdesigner had put in a browser checking script…
) and I keep syaing that it’s the dumb designer’s fault not FF! Who knows for what kind of weird reasons that webdesigner had put in a browser checking script…