Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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Originally Posted by
pauland
...but I've seen many naff ones in HTML myself.
Very true.
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Originally Posted by
pauland
I think this is an issue that we will have to agree to disagree on. I look at that site and see examples of almost everything that is wrong with Flash sites.
First it has a landing page telling me where I can download Flash, I already have Flash installed. In most cases I would move on to the next site right now, but I'll still give this one a try. So I click the enter button and wait...and wait...and wait. It takes about 30 seconds of looking at a spinning progress bar for the site to load. What do I get? Another landing page with an enter button, you've got to be kidding me. This is like placing an order in a restaurant and having the waiter come back to the table twice, before giving the order to the kitchen, to ask if I really want to order the fish. Under normal circumstances there is no way that I would still be around.
The site finally lets me in and it looks nice. Fortunately, I'm working on a laptop with a 1024x768 display so I don't have the small font issues that others have reported in the thread you linked to. Personally, I find all of the sliding panels distracting but you can certainly do that without Flash too. Everything is going ok until I get to the thumbnail gallery. I'm back to the spinning progress bar. It seems to take about 3-5 seconds from when I click on an image until it starts to display. That is far to long for these modestly sized pictures.
There are also the general issues that I raised earlier, i.e. the back button doesn't work properly. Although I haven't really tested it, loading this site in a text browser suggests that it is not accessible to users of nonvisual browsers. Argueably this is not as much of an issue for this site as its primary goal is to provide visual information about previous building designs. However, we shouldn't forget The Blind Billionaire (Google). How am I going to find the name of that architect who designed that really cool addition for my boss's friends in east Dulwich?
My main complaint about this site, and most other Flash sites, is that form has been allowed to dictate function. The users experience has been comprimised because of the designers desire to control all aspects of the sites display, without acknowledgeing that users will inevitably be viewing the site under "unusual" conditions, e.g. using a monitor with a resolution of 1920x1200 so they can't read the tiny font. Finally, I don't see Flash really adding anything to this site, most of the same graphical effects could be achieved with XHTML+CSS+JavaScript, so why put up with its drawbacks?
Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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Originally Posted by
pauland
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Originally Posted by
WolfMoonHP
Will, you aren't the right demographic. It's remarkable similar to 'proper' childrens software and likely to appeal to children.
I'm pretty sure there is a joke about ADD in here somewhere.:)
Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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Originally Posted by
jedfrechette
I'm pretty sure there is a joke about ADD in here somewhere.:)
LOL...you could be right. I freely admit that no matter how much I love the Harry Potter books, I am WAY past the age group for which they were aimed.
When I was a kid, I remember impatiently for the concluding volumes of Tolkien's books!
---
Will
Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
"If you could point me towards one it would be much appreciated."
http://www.fantasyinteractive.com
Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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Originally Posted by
sgiff
That site isn't terribly offensive either, but this luddite still has most of the same complaints. I see that the back button does work so I'll give them credit for that. It's not indexed by Google and it's slow, the videos spend a lot of time buffering. I just tested my connection and I seem to be getting ~2-3 Mb/s download at the moment. See I don't hate all Flash. :) I will add one other pet peeve to the list. The site makes noise when I navigate to it. If I click on a video or sound clip that's one thing but I don't want a site making all kinds of racket and disturbing everyone else in the office just because I navigated to it.
I think this site could be fixed, at least to make it acceptable to me as a user. If I was paying someone to design it for me I would demand something better. The changes I would make would be to not play a video on the homepage and perhaps to make the video player at the top of the screen more obviously a video player. Specifically, the buttons for selecting individual videos look like a standard menu bar for navigating to different parts of the site.
Which brings me back to the same questions I had before. What does doing the entire site in Flash add to this site that couldn't be achieved by doing the site in HTML and embedding Flash for the interactive elements? Are the gains worth the cost?
P.S. Tallis I'm sorry I turned your thread into my personal crusade against Flash.
Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Jeepers! :eek:
This is the part where I say "sorry I asked!" :D
I never wanted to design a commercial web site with just flash or even with xxpro, I was just wondering about the new flash capabilities, and if it's only animation, like movies/moving vectors, or now that there's some flash design or export ability, a simple website can be designed to be a placeholder until a larger site can be built-- placeholder like a simple business card, tiny photo gallery, small mission statement, contact info, etc.
Anyway, I was never thinking of pretending XXP has somehow morphed into Flash 9 Alpha... I still want to know if there's a template or a simple recipe for creating a small menu system and like 4-8 pages, and how that menu would be created in the XXP workflow, or if only < and > arrow navigation is possible and you can only create, basically, a slidshow, with no overarching menu...
Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
I'll add my voice in support of Jed's crusade against Flash sites.
Flash is okay for banners and maybe even for nav bars and menus and for specific items but whole sites created in Flash?
Thanks but no thanks.
What is the point of Flash sites anyway?
Are they faster loading? No.
Are they easier to read? No.
Are they easier to navigate? No.
So what is the benefit please?
Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
The thing is some people like flash sites. If the customer wants a flash site he is paying for what he wants not what you like or dislike. If I was the customer and you told me you don't like flash sites and tried to disuade me I would take my business elsewhere.
That is the irony of the internet there a lot of choices, if you can afford to bypass a customer cause of you peeves you are the lucky one.
I feel a web designer should afford himself at least some knowledge of what is out there. The internet has changed over the last 15-20 years and the capabilities and W3C recommendations are changing at a remarkable speed..
Just my thoughts
Jim
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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With Pro supporting flash now, is it possibleto create an entire, albeit tiny website in XXP? Buttons can be used for navigation from a main menu instead of simple forward-backward arrows to progress thru an animation?
If yes, do you think there might be a tutorial in the future?
Thanks
Yes it can and don't believe all the the html crusaders. :rolleyes:
Egg
Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Nice job Egg. I didn't know you were allowed to have a Flash site without Dancing girls.. ;-) Couldn't you have made it boigger than 22K for the luddites? ;-)