Re: FLASH: No! More demo FLAs....(reply to Troy Swain)

[Mountain, Mike J]

Troy (and everyone else)


You make some interesting points, and I think you've put your finger on the

crux of the issue. There are far to many flash designers kitting there pages

out with flash toys....because they can - Not because they serve any real

purpose. As an example (which resides on a lot of "SSOD" sites)....lableless

buttons, where the user is "encouraged" to roll over every single bloody

button until they find the one they want.....no hint, no graphic...nothing

to even suggest what the buttons do until you "roll over" them, hardly user

friendly...interactive sure...but condusive to good navigation. I think

not...who'd  make a remote for a tv with no numbers on, or a keyboard full

of blank keys? Stupidity.


Anyway, I've strayed a bit...what I'm trying to say is, to quote an article

I recently read, "there are far too many decorators, and not enough

"Designers". This is where Flash is it's own worst enemy, it encourages

designers to program and programmers to design, which is alright up to a

point....but I certainly wouldn't let a programmer loose on my "other"

PhotoShop designs, and I doubt any software company would bring in graphic

designers to do the programming for them.....


So where does this leave us? Many of us have learnt new skills, some of us

who are artistic and good at programming have thrived, others have tried to

hard to compensate one aspect..either programming or design with heavy use

of the other.


"Content is king"....say it loud, make it your mantra. A site should never

be judged on how many whizzy effects it has....but on whether it delivers

what it sets out to do in the first place. Maybe that goal is to say "Hey ,

look at all my whizzy effects." But if that's the case you better be

original, and jaw droppingly good...because frankly I'm bored of seeing the

same bits of scripting, albeit applied different ways, and it's only a

matter of time before your clients feel the same way.


And don't even get me started on preloaders.....an efficient site shouldn't

need one unless absolutely necessary, and to put one in front of the user

immediately when they surf onto your site is down right rude....I'd rather

have clean HTML than a five minute wait....Flash streams, make use of it,

it's your friend, load things in the background, fool the user into thinking

its a seamless quick loading site.....if I see a progress bar now...I surf

onwards.


Why am I telling you all this? Most of us know it already, but sometimes it

does us good to step back and think just what it is we're trying to

achieve.....the communication of information.....sometimes dragging in

passing trade in the process. There's a rule I learnt from working in radio

for a while - and that's that the average listener has a 30 second attention

span at there most attentive....30 seconds is about the equivalent of a

paragraph on you web page, sure attract their attention...but deliver the

goods aswell.


Flash on.


Oh yeah, and if there's on piece of advice I can give you, it's always use

sunscreen.


Mike M



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