zappy
01-30-2002, 09:44 PM
How does everyone here feel about flash based web sites. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm thinking about putting a sight togethter and I've been playing around in Dreamweaver and there are some pretty neat utlilities but one has to have Flash pluggins installed to view the "Eye Candy".
How many of you run from sites that require Flash? I have Flash set up on my Debian box for use with Netscape but haven't been able to view the pages I've made using Opera.
scott_R
01-30-2002, 09:54 PM
No problem here, as long as you keep in mind that some people won't have it available (don't know who, but it's always good to be sure). Especially if your site's information is critical to others, or part of a business strategy, you might want to have a version available that doesn't require the eye candy. A lynx (text-based browser) compatible site option is even better. Not too many people use lynx as thier main browser, but if you want to get information as fast as possible, nothing beats it.
Flash is great for eye candy. Just make sure you don't bog your users down in eye candy and turn them away from the information you're providing, by making your site too slow to download, unless the users opt for it.
Personal opinion, I don't care alot for Flash. Kind of reminds me of Windows, all polish and no substance.
Rakeswell
01-31-2002, 01:09 AM
Scott_R's advice is sound.
I think you also need to factor in the purpose for the site you are about to build, and ask yourself if the flash whiz-bangs serve any real purpose. If it's just eye-candy like you said, I'd say don't do it.
Yes, Macromedia says that what, 95% of all internet users have a flash plugin installed. But there are still good reasons to stay away from using flash.
The internet will not be accessed purley by means of a PC and a browser and this will increasingly become the case. Already many of us read the Times on our Palms, etc. There is a very good case to be made for sticking with the standards recommended by the w3c. Ideally, if everyone did this, things would be a lot better.
Not only would we get away from IE-centeric website construction, but also we begin to approach the ideal of using the web and HTML/XML to seperate style and content. What that means for you and me is that as long as you have a device that is standards-compliant, you can access any standards-compliant documents. It may look different, but because we've taken the time to write markup that seperates style and content, it won't really matter -- it will still be intelligible and useful!
OTOH, if you just want to have some fun, and that's all your project is about -- go ahead and play around with it. I used to be all over futzing with JavaScript/DHTML, and after a while, 1) the novelty wore off, 2) it's almost always a hack, so it always cuts someone out, 3) there's usually a better, standards-compliant way.
Try messing around with CSS2! There are lots of neat things you can do with it. It's a standard, and even if most clients don't fully support that standard *yet*, because the markup separates style and content, it will still be quite usable...