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Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Regardless of whether you can or not please don't.
Although Flash can be used effectively I can't think of any sites done entirely in Flash that I would willingly return to. It encourages bad ui design by breaking the web's fundamental interaction principles, makes it more difficult for search engines to index your site, and is slow (no I'm not using dial up).
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jedfrechette
It encourages bad ui design by breaking the web's fundamental interaction principles, makes it more difficult for search engines to index your site, and is slow (no I'm not using dial up).
That's a lot of prejudices.
"It encourages bad ui design by breaking the web's fundamental interaction principles."
That's a broad statement, just exactly are "the web's fundamental interaction principles."?
Encouraging bad UI design? No more than HTML or any other web technology does.
Problems with search engines? You have a point.
Slow? Flash can be way faster than HTML, if it's slow it's either content heavy or badly designed.
There's good and bad design out there and it's not related to any one technology, including Flash.
Finally, I don't recommend Xara as a website builder either.
Paul
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Paul,
That's a refreshing opinion to hear and quite correct. Let's escape from the html etc straight-jacket.
The search engine situation is different but not insurmountable.
Agreed. Pro shouldn't be considered as a Flash site builder.
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pauland
That's a lot of prejudices.
"It encourages bad ui design by breaking the web's fundamental interaction principles."
That's a broad statement, just exactly are "the web's fundamental interaction principles."?
Your right, I am prejudiced against Flash web sites but that's because I've had to endure so many bad ones. I don't object to all use of Flash only its use to create an entire site. I've never designed a Flash site so I don't know what is possible my comments are based solely on my experiences as a user. Actually, before I posted my original response I really tried to think of an example of a "good" Flash site. If you could point me towards one it would be much appreciated.
The best example of a "good" site that I could think of is kuler. It's a kind of cool site by Adobe for creating and sharing color themes. Its even fairly snappy. However, it does not behave how the rest of the web behaves. That is what I ment by fundamental interaction priciples, i.e. the interface behaves how the user expects it to behave.
For example, suppose I spend some time navigating through the site and checking out different color themes. When I hit the back button in my browser I expect to be taken back to the previous color theme that I was viewing. Unfortunately, I am taken to whichever site I was at before kuler. Compare this to COLOURlovers, although certainly not perfect at least navigation works as I would expect it to.
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
I think the problem comes in when people try to do WAY too much Flash on their pages.
I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter books and movies, and when I checked out the author's web site, I was apalled! I think Flash cann add a lot of "sparkle" to a web site, but there really is such a thing as too much!
Check here: http://www.jkrowling.com/en/index.cfm to see what I mean
---
Will
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
[QUOTE=jedfrechette;186823]Your right, I am prejudiced against Flash web sites but that's because I've had to endure so many bad ones.[quote]
I understand completely, but I've seen many naff ones in HTML myself.
Quote:
I don't object to all use of Flash only its use to create an entire site.
I think it depends on the audience. Some niche audiences are candidates for Flash sites. Most people these days have the flash plugin and it's easy to download. Search engine optimization is a hassle though.
Quote:
I've never designed a Flash site so I don't know what is possible my comments are based solely on my experiences as a user. Actually, before I posted my original response I really tried to think of an example of a "good" Flash site. If you could point me towards one it would be much appreciated.
Check out this thread: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...629#post186629
Quote:
The best example of a "good" site that I could think of is
kuler. It's a kind of cool site by Adobe for creating and sharing color themes. Its even fairly snappy. However, it does not behave how the rest of the web behaves. That is what I ment by fundamental interaction priciples, i.e. the interface behaves how the user expects it to behave.
I almost posted about kuler in the other forums - not as a flash example, but as a cool thing in it's own right.
What people are comfortable with on the web changes all of the time, as does what they expect. Everyone is different, but we all have some fundementals.
Quote:
For example, suppose I spend some time navigating through the site and checking out different color themes. When I hit the back button in my browser I expect to be taken back to the previous color theme that I was viewing. Unfortunately, I am taken to whichever site I was at before kuler. Compare this to
COLOURlovers, although certainly not perfect at least navigation works as I would expect it to.
For me the "back" button is not essential. In many respects I consider it to be a real nuisance. It allows me to run back and fore through web pages where what I looked at before is no longer valid. For many years I've developed desktop software with no concept of a back/forward navigation. It is possible to support the back button with flash, but it's a pain.
Paul
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
WolfMoonHP
I think the problem comes in when people try to do WAY too much Flash on their pages.
I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter books and movies, and when I checked out the author's web site, I was apalled! I think Flash cann add a lot of "sparkle" to a web site, but there really is such a thing as too much!
Check here:
http://www.jkrowling.com/en/index.cfm to see what I mean
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Will
Will, you aren't the right demographic. It's remarkable similar to 'proper' childrens software and likely to appeal to children.
I like it - don't think of it as a web page.
Paul
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Drawing in Flash and SwishMax isn't that easy
So I use XXP for layouts because it xports swf(Vector is mainstream in Flash)the swf can be imported into a flasheditor and then you can adjust your site to your needs
But i'll allways use html over/beneath/beside it
The truth is every big corp. nowadays use Flash to get things under your
attention(ads,trailers............)
Flash makes things graphics wise better looking
(BTW. I'm from the Netherlands where 70% uses the internet
with almost 80% uses ADSL or Cable,so speed isn't the problem for not using flash)
So if you want some inspiration of how compact looking sites in flash can be
go see it here>>http://www.thefwa.com/
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Hi
Flash used to be the "tool of choice" for modern websites but internet users are now far more aware and with the increase of graphics on the tv etc. Flash sites no longer impress. The general view is that the internet is used to gain information. Thereare exceptions as has been mentioned such as game sites but any modern website should be designed to impart basic information with 15 to 20 seconds -the average attention span.
My preference is to use xara as a graphics design tool to create my graphics for web sites. OK I purchased pro but I was never under the illusion it would replace my use of Flash, swift etc.
As to using it to design a web site you will still need the basic HTML to format the page so you will need a working knowledge of HTML or appropriate software.
My opinion of course
Ian
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pauland
...but I've seen many naff ones in HTML myself.
Very true.
Quote:
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?
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pauland
Quote:
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.:)
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
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
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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
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
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.
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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...
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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?
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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?
Quote:
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
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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? ;-)
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tallis
Jeepers! :eek:
This is the part where I say "sorry I asked!" :D
Never say that! it's been interesting.
Quote:
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.
Eggs given you the answer!
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Cheers Paul,
However I must agree upto a point that there are a lot of Flash site that excel at using tiny fonts and "try to guess how to navigate this site" content. But even more so there's even more bland "corporate" html sites out there all identical.
Egg
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Hi Egg,
buttons without 3D button effect? If you press a button, the button should move a little bit down to give the user a feedback, that he is pressed.
Remi
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Egg: I know it took a while, but I can feel that you were just waiting in the wings, wating til the turn of the word took the proper angle, and the conversation became sufficiently thick to pop in a little vinegar and sugar... thanks!
Jed: Not a problem whatsoever, enjoyed the discussion and learned a lot, as always here.
As I've said before, I can count on one hand the number of software products that have vibrant communities like this one, and it is a comfortable mix of great technical ability and welcoming patience. I know that even "arguements" here are about ideas, not personalities ( ok, ok, with one or two exceptions... :rolleyes: ), and it's like being in a coffee shop, half business, half pleasure.
Thanks for all the responses!
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Egg, I think, it's a little misunderstanding. My last post was not meant as a rant about using full Flash sites or not. My post was about User interface design principles.
There are different user interfaces possible within a website:
- If you use a flat horizontal menu as main navigation element on your website, there is no 3D effect necessary within the horizontal menu.
- The same with a tabbed page layout.
- Also, simple HTML links doesn't own a 3D effect, if you click them.
- But if you use buttons with a rectangle around and want to look them like standalone buttons in a application, there is a graphical feedback for the user necessary - typically a visual effect, which feigns the user a pressing of the button. Otherwise, the button looks wrong.
Within Adobe Flash you're able to create buttons as a symbol with an own timeline for creating the 3D effects as much as you need. I'm not sure, if it's possible to implement such buttons within Xara Xtreme PRO's flash functions.
Regards,
Remi
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Remi,
I wasn't suggesting that you or anyone else was ranting about anything. I was just having a 'tounge in cheek' dig at the concept that a Flash sites has to have whistles & bells and loading bars etc. I just wanted to demonstrate that even XtremePRO could be used to create a simple 'all Flash' web site. The last one posted achieved this very well in my opinion, with a 7 page web site with a 'DOWN' state on each button when clicked and with a total site size of 9Kb.
Quote:
But if you use buttons with a rectangle around and want to look them like standalone buttons in a application, there is a graphical feedback for the user necessary - typically a visual effect, which feigns the user a pressing of the button. Otherwise, the button looks wrong.
I still don't understand the point your trying to make here. Are you suggesting a RollOver effect or an OnRelease effect?
Egg
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Egg Bramhill
I still dont understand the point your trying to make here. Are you suggesting a RollOver effect or an OnRelease effect?
It depends - I'm not sure if you really want buttons for navigating through the website.
If you really want to use a button as a navigation element, the button needs an OnRelease effect like a normal button in the following example.
But I would recommend to change the layout of your navigation: Don't use rectangles around the menu entries to avoid the button-look. Perhaps more something like that:
Attachment 32951
Regards,
Remi
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
I think, if you intend making a flash website, this only makes sense if you use actionscript (the internal programming language) as well.
If you only do it with graphics and animations it either will grow up rapidly or it might look like made for a kiddys place. Especially if you have several text flying around makes the file size explode.
Although I don't like fully flash-sites, you can make them for use with low-band modem too. The preloading of content can be made in the background so the user almost won't notice it. Just put your animation into pieces which you load BEFORE the user will click them.
The argument with the back-button is true ... and not. The original back-button don't work with flash, that's right, But nobody refuses you from making one by yourself. Works wonderful.
By the way: SwishMax is not as easy as most of the "quick and dirty" flash-generators. Yo're right. But it is much easier than the original Flash by Macromedia/Adobe. And 99,5 % compatible with it. And much cheaper anyway.
Have a nice flashy night.:)
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Remi,
Quote:
It depends - I'm not sure if you really want buttons for navigating through the website.
If you really want to use a button as a navigation element, the button needs an OnRelease effect like a normal button in the following example.
Isn't that exactly the same as I did in post #26? The buttons Decrease in size on release.
Quote:
But I would recommend to change the layout of your navigation: Don't use rectangles around the menu entries to avoid the button-look. Perhaps more something like that:
I agree totaly, but the mini site was a simple example for new users and is used in the tutorial. That's why it's deliberately basic, no hidden button areas etc.
Tom,
Quote:
I think, if you intend making a flash website, this only makes sense if you use actionscript (the internal programming language) as well.
If you only do it with graphics and animations it either will grow up rapidly or it might look like made for a kiddys place. Especially if you have several text flying around makes the file size explode.
I create all my web sites in Flash and would never dream of going backwards by using XXPro. However the original question was "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?" I was answering this question and supplying a simple tutorial. It needn't be like a kiddy place at all and where did you get all this flying text from?
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Egg, you're right, with post #26 and with your example for new users.
Personally, I prefer to create HTML/DHTML pages, because of their advantages (I've talked about the reasons in detail in another thread).
Remi
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Hi all
I've only designed webpages in html, dhtml, and javascript.
But I'm open to all possibilities!
What about the possibility of PDF?:eek:
I have'nt bought PRO yet but it seems possible.
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Egg: "And now the tutorial."
Page 3 of your swf-formatted tutorial on how to make a swf website, you indicate that ( in animation properties, frame tab ) "change the display-this-frame-for to zero seconds". IN XXP, doing this creates an access violation error- continue or quit. THis happens 100% of the time. The program inserts 0.01 seconds instead of 0.0 or 0. I tried going into the "animation loop and speed" tab to change the 0.01 to 0, and that wouldnt take either
:confused:
edit- i just noticed in page 4 of the tut that your dialog box indeed has the 0.01 seconds is well... so you cant put zero in there, can you ( technically)?... Did you get the error though?
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Tallis,
No I didn't get a AVE error, but you're correct you can enter a zero value in the frame rate and it does now revert to 0.01 secs. It never did pre PRO as far as I can remember, does now but seems to apply the animation with no problems.
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Ugh. Another update :-) I closed down the program and then reopened the saved file, and now it works. Go figure.
By the way, nowhere in help can I find a reference to "Target frame for URL" needing to be "_frame" when arranging navigation within a swf file.... Where should I be looking for the official documentation? Your tutorial is great.
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Tallis,
I think this is perhaps due to the late addition of this feature. Paul seems to have discovered this feature without any reference to help files. I don't know how he tripped over this fact. Hopefully the help files will be updated in the CD Rom launch.
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Egg, thanks for sticking with me on this semi-old topic... ( Things move so quickly here that a 3-5 day old post is ancient history it seems! )
One last dumb question. The "zero" second frame delay about which we're tallking now-- the one which is switched out for 0.01 by the program when you hit apply-- I noticed that in your other earlier post in the same thread where you attached flashsitesrcrapdotcom.xar
Open it. The Frame 1 ( background ?) delay is actually ZERO!
How did you achieve this in light of what we're discussing!?
I went and changed it to 1, applied, then went to change it back to 0, thinking the program would insert that 0.01 that's in your tutorial, and it just stayed with the 0! Weird.
ps- one thing that's been bugging me that i can't fingure out about the size of the exported swf animation ( H&W not mb ) . The help file says that the animation size is determined by a clipview. Your tutorial says the animation size is determined by the background.
So I see when I export your tutorial the_site.xar, I do get a swf with a height and width the same as the larget rectangle you painted. But I couldnt find any clipview on it.
And the export dialog for animations has many less features than the export for a drawing. Now where to choose the size dimensions.
Is it just unwritten that the export defaults to the extent of footprint of all the items on the drawing?
If so, if I need a 850 by 550 flash web page, I should just make that size rectangle on the first frame, the background as you called it in your tutorial, build everthing on top of it in frames 2-xx, then export to get a 850x550 swf.
sorry for the run-on questions....
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Re: Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?
Quote:
Is it just unwritten that the export defaults to the extent of footprint of all the items on the drawing?
If so, if I need a 850 by 550 flash web page, I should just make that size rectangle on the first frame, the background as you called it in your tutorial, build everthing on top of it in frames 2-xx, then export to get a 850x550 swf.
Tallis,
Basically that's correct. The size is determined by the footprint of all the items in the drawing EXCEPT if you use a clipview. The clipview will reduce the swf size down to the cliping shape. This is very handy when you want objects appearing to slide on & off the stage.
I think I might have been confusing myself re the background display timing. I've just done a quick experiment and it is still possible to give a single frame a zero duration (via the Frame tab). However if you select the Animation Loop & Speed tab and give a zero timing (which is a global setting) it reverts to 0.01secs across all frames (which makes sense).