swish

[Erik Heyninck]

following deep's link to sucking pages I stumbled once again on swish. it is reaaly magick, but has it a practical use? I mean, nothing is more terrible to me than these sites with all their animated gifs and flash things that slow down the download and are of no real use.
What's your opinion?

[Cyclone]

Although I see flash splash pages as generally a total waste, especially when they take so long to load and make next to no sense whatsoever, swish seems to me to be making headway in two areas:

First, it's (SWiSH - the program to produce) price of $30.00 US when compaired to Flash from Macromud at least allows us to get in the game.

And the game of Flash/SWiSH capabilities is, as far as I can see, faster download potential with SWiSH.

This doesn't say much for the question of IF someone should use it. It is after all a perogative.

Some folks hate Flash as much as Pop-ups (another hot issue). SWiSH is "hope" for me. I'm just beginning when I see their use, along with others like dHTML

Just my O

[dk_art]

I think huge Splash pages that take minutes to download are somewhat annoying and will only be watched once if that! However simple designed swish animations can be nice. My logo on my site is only 10k and isn't very much really but it's not bad and downloads in a Flash .... er .... Swish I mean

www.dkingdesign.com


David King [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[Jen Worden]

Hi Erik et al ...

Interesting topic!

Ironically, I've been thinking about stretching my creative talent and finally springing for Flash - I have Director and am pretty comfortable with Macromedia's products. This is the first time I'd heard of Swish.

Re: Flash vs. Swish
Generally, I maintain that you get what you pay for. PhotoPaint ain't Photoshop. HotDog (or one of its brethren) ain't Homesite. And my guess, is Swish ain't Flash. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be a good stepping stone to see if animation is even worth exploring.

Flash (or Swish) vs. Non-Flash
As ever, know your audience! For a no-nonsense, factoid site having a huge upfront download to get information that could just as easily be rendered in standard HTML isn't justified. Of course, as more people get on cable or DSL this'll become less of a factor but I still think info sites should resist going to Flash. For "art" sites, where you're going for an experience as much as info, then balls to the wall GO FOR IT!

Some recent Flash inspirations :

http://www.dcianfarra.com
http://www.aarondeemer.com

And anything linked on K10K

cfn ... Jen
Jen Worden
Web Developer
www.meadoworks.com

[Thomas.Sorrill]

I'd have to say that too much of anything can be a bad thing. I vaguely remember when animated GIFs were all the rage. And they were everywhere...even in emails! Actually, you can still see sites in Asia that are a bit "overdone" in the GIF area....like 10 banners on the main page. I have to admit though, there is a banner that will track you as you scroll down the page (floats across the page)..cool in an annoying/new idea sort of way.

Flash is a bit like that now. A lot of people get into it and then just get carried away, not stopping to think if that part of the site really NEEDS to be flash, or if simple text and a few graphics wouldn't be better.

-T

[Erik Heyninck]

I see Flash as an Art tool. There are incredible things one can do with it. But as a knife is not the same knife when it's in the hand of a killer or a surgeon, so is Flash a real gumption trap if it is used for loading...loading...loading... and then a big bubbling: Hello! on a SPLASH!!!page. Most people, even with ISDN and higher skip the intro. Understandably. So when you are capable of using this tool and make Art sites devoted to its use, like there are phothoshop, painter, fractal sites etc, its ok by me. But on most sites it is a merely a demonstration of the "talent" of the designer, and not of real practical use. When you want to demonstate what you can do, you merely demonstrate only what you can't.

About Swish: of course Swish cannot "compete" with Flash. For a mere 6% of the price this would be a miracle. But with Swish you have really good working text effects and some bitmap effects too. And for most of the use of Flash- I don't talk about the real Flash Artists or the people who want to use it for that goal- Swish is a good alternative. And with the coming upgrade, it'll be even closer to its bigger brother.

But what I said about Flash is also meant for Swish and aniGIFS: jump into it as an Artform, or use it sparingly. All these moving things on my monitor make me nervous.

There is also this double face of web-design that intrigues me. On one hand you may not forget the people who still have a 3.0 browser, or even less, and that have their 640x480 monitor set at 256 colours. Websafe colours are an argument (and a discussion: see other topic) etc.

On the other hand you have the extremes of broadband, Flash, etc. These can be beautiful, but the democracy of the Internet is at stake when some are more equal to the Law than others.
Of course, no one has to be punished because having ISDN or better and IE5.5, that takes more space than some other peoples RAM, to browse with.

Of course it's a question of the public you're aiming at, and your own talents. But, although I'll also go for Flash later this year, I do appreciate simple, but well designed sites where every detail adds to the overall beauty and where nothing tries to divert your attention to some flashing banner that hammers a message you're not really interested in into your brain. And that is the danger of using Flash the wrong way and the reason so many people don't like it. I sympathise with them, but always give them some real Flash site adress to visit, to show them what it CAN be in the hands of a master. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

And last but not least: Photoshop may well be the best, but how many people use it for things that could also be done, and with visibly the same quality, by simpler apps that only cost a fraction of PS?

[This message was edited by Erik Heyninck on February 15, 2001 at 10:52 AM.]

[This message was edited by Erik Heyninck on February 15, 2001 at 11:02 AM.]

[Jen Worden]

One thing I forgot to mention re: the use of Flash ... don't know about Swish, 'though I get the feeling that it's used more for spinning 3D logos (read "dancing baloney") than for presentation-ware, yes?

Many designers - and at the risk of ruffling feathers - usually those that come to the web from print, can't be bothered dealing with the challenges (read "extreme limitations") that designing for the web presents. Different platforms, different computers, different browsers all add up to some major creative efforts required to deliver a site that looks similar across the board. (as an aside, if you want to see the most amazing browser detect script go to : http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-deve...wser_type.html [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] )

Flash circumnavigates all of that. It has the highest plug-in audience of all - 96% of all those online according to Macromedia. It's so much easier to create something that looks exactly the same on whatever browser/platform. Not to mention cheaper!

But. You get overuse, misuse - splash pages that take forever to download for the proverbial "Hello!", text that could just as easily be rendered in HTML but doesn't look as nice as anti-aliased image fonts etc. ad nauseum.

In a similar vein, ALA (A List Apart) has taken the bull by the horns and has redesigned for Standards Compliant browsers only. Try visiting with a 4.x browser or better yet with 3.x or Lynx! You get the message "Please upgrade to a browser that supports web standards."

Thoughts?

cfn ... Jen
Jen Worden
Web Developer
www.meadoworks.com

[Erik Heyninck]

as with Musea and shops. There are places where not everyone is welcome, and some people prefer to go just there to be part of the in-crowd, the so-called yuppies of the eighties that are the prozacs of to-day, while some others go there because their fundamental nature simply belongs there.

And perhaps we should simply forget about Lynda Weinman's websafe colour palette as nearly everyone now has at least a 800x600 monitir set at millions of colours, and as, on the other hand, Mac design will always be too dark on a PC monitor, whilst the majority of people on the net use Windows on a PC.

Personally, I see no creativity whatsoever in having to "navigate" between these reefs that only limit your possible movements. Therefore I can understand and support the point of view that says to forget about the past and make sites for today and the future, but the reaction of this "a list apart" is beyond all human behaviour in arrogance and racism. When you make your site for an elite: OK, but then simply leave the others out without spitting in their faces.

If you want the content of your site to be seen by the majority of people on the net, then the use of Flash itself is no objection, save for the connection speed. The majority still has, in the best of cases, a 56 V90 modem. Agreed that nearly everyone can upgrade from a 14 or 28 to this 56, but a cable, ADSL, ISDN or faster connection is not for everyone. This may change, but meanwhile you have , as a designer, to make your choice. And, like they said in ancient Greece: to avoid the dilemma, the two horns of the bull, you can jump between them, I mean: make the classical two versions of one site. More work, but MUCH more visitors. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]