Reply to: Looking for 1st Contract - help

[Cowboy Bob]

The BBC does something equally as bad and thats use the Real Media format. And yes, I do refuse to install it

They're working on it though - http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7537

Test it out here - http://dirac.sourceforge.net/

BTW - Real Player is nowhere near as evil on a Linux machine as it is on Windows - no nagging, no taking over your machine, doesn't hog memory etc etc. Why? Who knows...

[Spacecadet]

If a popular site like for example BBC News was done in Flash rather than HTML, would people boycott it on mass because it was Flash? I don't think so. However they might boycott it on mass if it was all fancy graphics and no content, but that's a different issue. At the end of the day, the tool used shouldn't matter to the end user, only the result.

The BBC does something equally as bad and thats use the Real Media format. And yes, I do refuse to install it

[Cowboy Bob]

Not at all...some of us are quite happy not being technical and simply doing things in the most time effective manner. Once I am happy with the general look and feel of my moonfruit site I intend to pay someone who knows what they are doing to copy and then enhance it using HTML...so in terms of both a temporary measure and also a way of showing someone what I am looking for in a website I think it is pretty effective.

At least have a plain text version so people can skip to that if they want. It doesn't have to be fancy, just contain the info. People who don't want Flash will be happy with that.

[Davros]

A prototype is good, but agree with most others, flash everywhere is not the way to go for the production solution.

[NewBoy]

So Moonfruit is a Mickey Mouse Fisher Price DIY Webtulipe building pointy-clicky thingy that no-one in their right mind would ever admit to using??? Is that it?

Not at all...some of us are quite happy not being technical and simply doing things in the most time effective manner. Once I am happy with the general look and feel of my moonfruit site I intend to pay someone who knows what they are doing to copy and then enhance it using HTML...so in terms of both a temporary measure and also a way of showing someone what I am looking for in a website I think it is pretty effective.

[VectraMan]

If you don't mind not reaching those people at all, I'm not suggesting that's anybody's business but yours (or rather, the one who pays). I'm just pointing out that there are a number of reasons why a Flash animation will send some people passing on by: the designer should consider whether he wants that to be "passing on by to the rest of the site" or "passing on by to some other site".

Fair point. But the question is how many people really do that? A marketing person would tell you that the people on the fringes (like techies) don't matter, and it's the great unwashed majority it has to reach, the ABC1s if you like. If you have to allow for people that don't have Flash, people with Unix or Macs, people with Mozilla version 1, mobile phones, internet TV set top boxes etc. etc., then you're producing everything to the pure lowest common denomonator and that means you're not selling yourself as well as you might to the 95% that could see your fabulously well designed slick interactive vector graphic'd Flash site. Maybe.

Think of it this way, not everyone has a colour TV, yet they still show snooker.

Just an opinion. I skip Flash intros too, as they're pretty much always pointless, and I'd much rather see decent content than slick graphics, but I think the original poster's site was a nice use of Flash with a nicer presentation of the content than you'd have in HTML. It's a shame to dismiss it just because Flash all too often means pointless intro movies.

[Fleetwood]

So Moonfruit is a Mickey Mouse Fisher Price DIY Webtulipe building pointy-clicky thingy that no-one in their right mind would ever admit to using??? Is that it?

[expat]

And how many times have you updated the browser to keep up with changing standards? If you fired up Mozilla version 1, or even IE version 1, how much of the web do you think would work? If a site requires any more than the very basic original version of HTML (which was meant to be about content not presentation), do you ask who it's meant to be for: you or the designer?

No difference really. 96% of people are meant to have the Flash player, which is good enough.

I might ask that. IE v1 is not a good example, it just didn't work. But I have made a point of keeping my own sites usable by people with older browsers, they are quite possibly not able to update them, and they might be just the people I want to reach.

Your argument is a bit circular if you say that 96% of people have Flash so that's good enough: it's a tech-oriented argument rather than a user-oriented argument. You might want to reach the people who don't. You might want to reach the people who have it, but not the latest version. You might want to reach the people who can play Flash but choose not to unless they know what it is (I suspect that "Skip Intro" is the most popular click on the net).

If you don't mind not reaching those people at all, I'm not suggesting that's anybody's business but yours (or rather, the one who pays). I'm just pointing out that there are a number of reasons why a Flash animation will send some people passing on by: the designer should consider whether he wants that to be "passing on by to the rest of the site" or "passing on by to some other site".

[DaveB]

moonfruit

[Fleetwood]

Yes, yes, yes. But you still haven't answered my question on "Moonfruit".

[VectraMan]

But at least that style doesnt make you wait for it to download and play itself before you can figure out it is just style and not the content you wanted.

That's not really true either. Websites don't always fill in the text and load the graphics later - in fact wasn't that one of the selling points of Firefox? And with broadband, I don't think the Flash loading time is an issue anymore (certainly the OP's site showed no loading screen for me, it just appeared). If anything, Flash as a compressed binary format ought to be much quicker loading that clunky old innefficient HTML. The difference is what people choose to do with it.

[VectraMan]

I've got a browser: if someone wants me to download and install more than that, I'd like to know a good reason why first. If I find that I need to do so in order to view a site at all, I start to ask who it's for: me or the designer. If I'm blocked right out of a site for want of the flashy new tools that will let the web designer send me a TV programme, I'll remember with distaste both that site and that product for a long time.

And how many times have you updated the browser to keep up with changing standards? If you fired up Mozilla version 1, or even IE version 1, how much of the web do you think would work? If a site requires any more than the very basic original version of HTML (which was meant to be about content not presentation), do you ask who it's meant to be for: you or the designer?

No difference really. 96% of people are meant to have the Flash player, which is good enough.

[DaveB]

I agree too, sort of. But what you say is equally true of 90% of company websites, even if they're purely done in HTML. You might deplore style over content, but look around at the real world: fashion, music, cars, magazines, advertising, movies, phones, iPods... Style over content rules.

But at least that style doesnt make you wait for it to download and play itself before you can figure out it is just style and not the content you wanted.

[VectraMan]

I've got better things to do with my time that stroke the egos of advanced graphic designers who are only out to show off their web design skills. All I'm interested in is good relevant and well written up-to-date content. The more boring and simple the website the better I like it.

I agree too, sort of. But what you say is equally true of 90% of company websites, even if they're purely done in HTML. You might deplore style over content, but look around at the real world: fashion, music, cars, magazines, advertising, movies, phones, iPods... Style over content rules.

[expat]

I agree with Denny.

Me too. The whole point of the medium is that I browse for what I want.

And I agree with DaveB: many users will just not be able to install the latest, or even any, version of Flash, even if they are inclined to. At home I can, but I'm not inclined to. I've got a browser: if someone wants me to download and install more than that, I'd like to know a good reason why first. If I find that I need to do so in order to view a site at all, I start to ask who it's for: me or the designer. If I'm blocked right out of a site for want of the flashy new tools that will let the web designer send me a TV programme, I'll remember with distaste both that site and that product for a long time.