Moderators: Judd
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Went surfing for some *winners*. The Communication Arts (www.commarts.com) website lists their interactive design annual winners every year. Not surprisingly, the first 12 or so for the last annual (2001) were all Flash or Shockwave driven. See for yourself here: BE WARNED: These not open a new browser.
African Voices Aniluxe The Apartment Barneys New York Blank + Cables Brand•New The Chopping Block Classic Motown Contentfree Driveway Demo Gourmet Settings hillmancurtis, inc. Laramara Foundation Microbus Nike iD NYC2012 On The American Trail The Remedi Project Restaurant.com Shorn Sub:Division TANK Target They Might Be Giants 300FeetOut Unwrapped: The Mysterious World of Mummies Williams-Sonoma 010101: Art in Technological Times |
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Beautiful Craig
 "Poetry in Motion" one might say.  I vote for giving users the option of viewing the site in Flash or not, so that everyone has a choice! Sadly - while the non flash sites are, on average, more usable (very good). They can be more "boring" by comparison when you look at overall aesthetic. Designer and developers *do* exist that can marry both excitement and usability and forego sacrificing ui standards along the way. Little by little, there are elegant extras that can create a dynamic - fun experience. As for not wanting to use something (buy something) b/c it is animated: The software industry developed UI standards over time by training people to use the limits of the technology we had. Can't we do better than that? I use *we* to mean society. Obviously if it harms children or causes a disaster due to human error, we haven't done our jobs, but there is a happy medium I just know it. On a similar note. Look what the entertainment industry managed to train the MTV generation to parse, visually? Not that I'm a huge advocate thesedays or anything - but we're only limited by our imaginations IMHO. I'm not saying throw junk at users. Nobody wants that. I am just tired of dismissing flash for being *very very bad for usability*. That shows lack of innovation to me. In fact, this was one of my favorite of the bunch listed above: Pretty dang simple: http://www.gourmetsettings.com/home.html OK. Whew. Thanks for the juice! |
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| <Craig Liebendorfer>
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That wasn't juice. That was a quintuple Americano apparently.
 What really gets in the way of some sites, IMHO, is the Flash that seems just to be there because it's WIZ! BANG! POW! Flash for the sake of Flash is sort of like neon: It's bright and purty, but not necessarily integral to delivering a message or helping customers navigate a site. Therefore, the delightful Skip. On the flipside, Flash when used like on the They Might Be Giants site (tmbg.com) is very much in keeping with the wonderful, wacky world of the Giants. 99% of TMBG fans who go there will understand the schema instantly. Non-fans will either be super curious based on what they see, or run screaming out of sheer confusion. Craig Craig Liebendorfer Infopop™ Support Enthusiast I am here to  you. |
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Groupee Newbie |
Erm, a disclaimer, if you so kindly will.
It's my first post here, and I don't want to come of appearing as if I'm on a high horse or anything. With that out of the way, I have some comments. My mother tongue isn't English, so I'll try to explain to the best of my capacities. Here goes: quote: In principal, I agree. On another level, however, this just spells 'insecurity' to me, in the sense that I think it's un-economical to develop two interfaces, where one of the two is useable in all situations and serves as a back-up incase the second fails; and the second is used when people decide not to use the first. I hope you understand my sentiment. quote: I think I understand what you're saying, and on some level it is correct. Static stuff appears more 'boring'. However, two comments on this: 1. Isn't the 'static stuff is more boring' also a result of your other point: we're fed so much animation anyway that we've kinda come to expect it. So we could turn this around: why not feed the user some more static stuff (if the content - why is the key - allows it)? 2. This point builds on point one: because there's more and more actions, sometimes a 'rest point' (like a simple static site) can be heaven to the viewer. So you can turn this into an advantage: everybody else is running around screaming for attention, while you stand still to get noticed. It's like bandwidth: sure there's more now, but a site made for low bandwidth will/can have a competitive advantage compared to a site that tries to use all that bandwidth. IMHO quote: Indeed. quote: The happy medium is almost always the way to go. quote: Maybe useability isn't the correct term. IMHO, it's just not very economical do devote a lot of resources to something that will not be used that much. Like the other poster said: flash for flash's sake is silly. Sorry if I over-generalised somewhere. Cheers. |
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Hi ars_fluf,
I appreciate all of your responses very much. The original post was back in April and since then (in the US) more and more corporate sites are using Flash --it is definitely coming of age with the browsers! The comments posted about doing 2 interfaces were merely for the purpose of serving the widest audience possible in terms of browsers. While some are painless (5.0 +) there were several older browsers hanging around out there, and it made sense to accommodate them both at one time. Now that entire sites are done in flash (not just specific parts) I agree--it is less of a resource drain to do one ui. As for static sites and areas for the eyes to rest-- I totally agree. IMHO most flash sites that merely animate when necessary are awesome. There are some amazing flash sites out there. One of the things that has me thinkin/worryin thesedays are how to archive them. Do you have any information on that in terms of printing them out? I wonder if future browser versions will support printing all linked pages in a Flash site? Hmmmmm. Take care. Welcome to the community! Amanda |
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