Well I'm feeling adventurous... I think all the points this author makes are valid. In fact it's something our industry should heed well. As developers when we leave the browser, it's easy to get carried away. Normally we have all these constraints like 'form controls' and 'underlined hyperlinks', components that are universal across the board. Our end users are extremely familiar with these items, so they can navigate anywhere in the web with moderate ease.
Now when we move into RIA everything the user knows about navigation... is gone. The developers now take on much more responsibility and usability (which most developers ignore all together) becomes mission critical. I don't think anyone can disagree that there are a tremendous amount of _shitty_ flash sites out there as a result. But I don't want to fully defend the a-hole who wrote this article (if you can even call it that). His points are valid, but they do not equate to "Flash is Evil" or "Flash sucks". Splash pages _are_ useless, flaming logos are soooooo 1997, and doing an entire site in flash, just for the sake of doing it is retarded. But just because there is a lot of crap built with the tools, doesn't mean the technology is evil. It's quite the opposite. The technology is so great, and so easy to use... that any shmuck can do it. (We run into this same issue with CF, it leads to bad programming tendencies, because it's so easy to use.) Now let's turn the tables here. Is this guy color blind, is the theme a tribute the short bus he rode to school in? Further more he doesn't even have a single image on his page, just text. (Is he Amish or something?) Additionally all his article are like 250px wide so every page is like 4 screens vertical. The right justified nav bar serves only one purpose.... to create dead space. I think considering his site, the author is discredited and possibly just jealous of designers in general. You know what pisses me off more than splash pages and pointless animations? The fact that any shmuck with notepad can have a web site. Adam Wayne Lehman Web Systems Developer Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Distance Education Division -----Original Message----- From: Haggerty, Mike [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 9:44 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: Is Flash really THAT good? Yep, Flash is that good. You need to trust me, not this author. Flash does a lot right now, and this guy chose to focus on it's usefulness in animation and graphics. That's a very poor representation of Flash's abilities, and the article is anything other than a critique of it's role in application development. In fact, this article is so bad I am adding it to my "Big Book of Useless Rubbish No One Should Waste Their Time" reading. Laters, M -----Original Message----- From: Jon Block [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 9:34 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: Is Flash really THAT good? This is a bit off topic but I wanted to ask this question specifically to this audience. There seems to be a sence that Flash is this awesome platform for rich internet applications that thats where "everything is going". All you hear about is how fast it is, how good looking it is, and so on. Maybe I'm the only one but Flash drives me crazy. Even though it has database connectivity, I still see it as a frustrating way to create needless animations. Maybe I'm wrong. I admit I have only got into Flash a little bit but every time I do, I end up asking myself why I am wasting my time with this tool. As application developers, do you take Flash seriously? Do you think it does or will ever make since to use it for your full blown applications? I just read over the message thread at: http://www.dack.com/web/flash_evil.html and I found it very interesting and I sort of agree with the author. He's also got an interesting usability test posted at: http://www.dack.com/web/flashVhtml/ I'm interested as to what you guys think. Thanks, Jon ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Host with the leader in ColdFusion hosting. Voted #1 ColdFusion host by CF Developers. Offering shared and dedicated hosting options. www.cfxhosting.com/default.cfm?redirect=10481 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
