flash design usuability article

[aversion]

http://www.digital-web.com/tutorials/

check out that article, it's good reading for any flash designer.

[sense]

Nice article, but nothing much new in there.

I think learning curve for flash should be
much higher then it is now...

Every John Doe is capable to create a site in flash in no time.

And see, allready the web is spoiled with crappy flashsites.

Most cliënts when coming to the office and offering them a flashsite
want overweigthed, screaming and flashing sites.

They're not thrilled by a nice, accessable well structured flashsite.

I think it's sad. In that way flash is a medium that will destroy itself...

regards Sense

still happy to be a FLASHER :-D

[8minus8]

Wow do that many people hate flash that they have to write an article giving us a kind of pep-talk? I've been in school too long I guess. That's the great thing about school, you get to experiment and do whatever you want.

it's unlikely to have justification for treating Flash as a platform rather than as a tool

That can be argued from several directions, but I do agree. I guess if you are targetting a broad audience you'd like to have some fusion of html and flash, so the non-frequent flash user can feel at home.

But the author did state, "as of 12/10/01: 90.93%" have the flash plug-in installed....

I guess you have to start curbing your design based on your target audience, which has always been the case.

Definitely an interesting article, the author covers a great deal, she doesn't say it's bad which is always good.
[Edited by 8minus8 on 01-23-2002 at 08:24 PM]

[entro]

shoddy article, it seems more bent on preventing people from using flash (negative slant on flash) even though it is supposed to help.

I just finished an interative personal site weighing in at :: gasp :: 14kb (pictures and all - flash is easy to optimize w/ vector gfx if you bother) + a 2kb text file for parsing. Size? 600px by 200x (pretty much as big as the top nav here). I am not quite done, but everything on the site (db queries etc) will be accessible from the main area. I come from the design idea where everything should be easily accessible within 1 click (maybe 2 if you suck) unless a portal. Flash has made tight compact navs a reality (http://www.miniml.com) and more efficient.

Flash, though still weak on a couple of items important for more complex sites (db web apps, simple image imports), if planned out, is hell of a lot better than blink and z-index.

[aversion]

yeah, it is a pretty basic article, i posted it because i see so many people who never consider any of these things when they design but in retrospect maybe the a design forum wasn't the best place to post it newbies forum maybe!

i have a hang up about the way people view usability, like it's a bad thing because of the associations with a certain neilsen, but it's not, it should be part of every designers' skill set.

it seems that everyone here understands that though