Design whole (small) website with Pro in Flash?

**Tallis** · 04 December 2006, 01:29 PM

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

**jedfrechette** · 04 December 2006, 04:40 PM

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).

**pauland** · 04 December 2006, 06:55 PM

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

**Egg Bramhill** · 04 December 2006, 08:06 PM

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.

**jedfrechette** · 04 December 2006, 08:12 PM

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.

**pauland** · 04 December 2006, 09:03 PM

[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.

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.

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

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.

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

**jedfrechette** · 05 December 2006, 02:36 PM

Originally Posted by pauland

...but I've seen many naff ones in HTML myself.

Very true.

Originally Posted by pauland

Check out this thread: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...629#post186629

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?

**sgiff** · 05 December 2006, 07:17 PM

"If you could point me towards one it would be much appreciated."

http://www.fantasyinteractive.com

**jedfrechette** · 05 December 2006, 11:21 PM

Originally Posted by sgiff

"If you could point me towards one it would be much appreciated."

http://www.fantasyinteractive.com

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.

**WolfMoonHP** · 04 December 2006, 08:32 PM

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