Fridays are such fertile ground for technology debates. Adam Wayne Lehman Web Systems Developer Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Distance Education Division
-----Original Message----- From: Adam Wayne Lehman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 12:33 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: Is Flash really THAT good? Uh oh, here we go again. I've taken the 'flash is unnecessary' side before. So I'll try my hand at the argument that flash is the future. Usability, usability, usability. I'd imagine that probably only 5% (if we're lucky) of web developers have studied usability at all. As for designers, I'd like to say that the percentage is more, but all the designers I know are 'artists' and have no clue about application design or usability. They know what is visually appealing, not functional. If developers put as much time into usability, case studies, and actually perform usability tests (which I'm sure most companies will view as a worthless expense) as we do coding, I think the perception of the flash RIA would dramatically improve. Bottom line is, if a flash application is done correctly, with enough focus on usability, then it will smoke any comparable HTML application. As for google and yahoo's success. I can think of a million ways google would be better as an RIA. As for weight, this comes back to the application's design. Which can very from app to app, so it's unfair the generalize RIA as being heavy just because a few are. Not to mention you can conserve a lot more bandwidth and download time with a flash app. Maybe there is an initial download of 50k, but every time you want to refresh the screen, or pull in some db data, you don't have to make another page call. You can get only the minimum data necessary, rather than load the same html and images over... and over... and over... and over again. As for non-standard navigation, what make flash navigation non-standard in compared to HTML. What is standard navigation anyhow? Standard navigation doesn't exist. It's just a concept. Adam Wayne Lehman Web Systems Developer Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Distance Education Division -----Original Message----- From: Lofback, Chris [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 11:07 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: Is Flash really THAT good? > However, with a thread like this, it makes me think that you > are like the others who bitch about flash yet haven't seen > any flash movies worth while. Here are a few flash sites > that I consider to be worth your viewing. > > http://www.2advanced.com/flashindex.htm > > http://www.egomedia.com > > http://www.estudio.com > > just about any flash site on http://www.cwd.dk > > http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html (had to throw this > is for the humor) > > Just to name a few. Well, call me old school, but I find these sites annoying and difficult to use. It is my firm opinion that the vast majority of web users do not care for this stuff. It is meant to impress developers, techies and managers but it is hopelessly unfriendly to the majority of users who simply want to accomplish a task on a site. They do not want to wait for these gee-whiz animations to load or to figure out which widget does what--they just want to get what they are there for, and making them wait while your site goes into these gyrations is just bad business. Who wants aggravated customers? Customer service always wins over gimmicks. On the web, "speed and usability" = good customer service, "splash pages and non-standard navigation" = bad service. This is going to be hotly denounced by those who love the bleeding edge, but plain HTML (black text, white BG, blue links, no fancy DHTML) is almost always the best choice to let the user get what they want fast. Unless your product IS multimedia-based, or you are using Flash (or any other plugin/gizmo) to make your service easier/faster to use or to provide some vital capabilities--like enhanced form validation/processing--I wouldn't use it. For whom do we develop our web apps? The developers or the users? If you are an online business, you'd better think about it! Look at Yahoo and Google. It's no coincidence that they are successful and they both use simple designs. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ OK, Flame on! :) Chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| 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 This list and all House of Fusion resources hosted by CFHosting.com. The place for dependable ColdFusion Hosting. http://www.cfhosting.com Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
