consistent ?

[theory1]

http://www.ardiislight.com/flash.html

It's quite a nice site, you will see on there front opening page however when you click a link, as sson as you come away from that opening page the whole navigation system changes. Do you think this is a bit of an issue?




[Edited by theory1 on 09-14-2002 at 10:39 PM]

[Aria]

i didn't think it was an issue - i still find it consistent mainly I guess cos of the colour scheme throughout the site. Its well done !

I also like the HTML alternative


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[Brainiac]

The only objection I have is if it's really necessary, of course it looks good, and displays some neat color transitions on MouseOver but I don't really see why it ought to be there. Esspecially since the splash contains Flash, which will make it harder for those who acctually don't have flash installed to reach the contents, but since 93% of all web-users have Flash (according to MacroMedia) that shouldn't be an issue.

But your question was if it is consistent; yes it is. It is a good way to use a splash page. And the color scheme and general layout isn't differing too much from the main site.

[herr_dada]

Wow! I loved it!! cool, clean, and great colour scheme!

[theory1]

if it's really necessary

Well it all depends on the purpose of the site i guess and if you are selling products primarily on the image/style factor then yeah i think it's justified.

I also think flash does a better job of rollovers, maybe it's just me on my 56k NZ piddler but on just about every damn website i visit that has javascript rollovers they are either very delayed thus = lame or they fail and many times when i click i get the wonderful image placer holder with a cross becuase the image has failed to load. < very common, flash will not do this and most times be smaller in size.

so maybe it's the 'not everybody having flash issue but when "93% of all web-users have Flash" ? well i mean consider my rollover problem and that more than more than 7% of web users have 56k modems.

i'm glad to hear you all think it's conistent

[Aria]

id argue that with Flash you can design a better UI thats also universal.

Even when it comes to basic UI elements such as a drop down menu. Anyone familiar with the DHTML/JavaScript code required for all browsers to make it work ?

Also if you think that some of your users maybe on lowmodem connection and the rollevers might take a while to load then consider how better that is than having a DHTML menu that doesnt work properly.

A well-known site http://www.rhizome.org --> if you have access to a Mac, load it and check their main Nav menu and then tell me what you see That's pretty embarassing !

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[Edited by Aria on 09-15-2002 at 09:20 PM]

[Brainiac]

Originally posted by Aria
id argue that with Flash you can design a better UI thats also universal.

Even when it comes to basic UI elements such as a drop down menu. Anyone familiar with the DHTML/JavaScript code required for all browsers to make it work ?

Also if you think that some of your users maybe on lowmodem connection and the rollevers might take a while to load then consider how better that is than having a DHTML menu that doesnt work properly.

First off, I correct myself, obviously the User-base for Flasg was 97,5%.

And secondly, I didn't meant another solution. Although you can get DHTML to work with a 100% Userbase, but that requires server-side scripting to select different pages depending on version of web browser.

DHTML/JavaScript can be made to work for just about every browser though, except text-based and most common DHTML libraries are compatible with Opera, Netscape, Internet Explorer and a few others. Also DOM (look-it-up), is a new standard making it possible to code extremly flexible DHTML code that works with all browsers that are supporting DOM. Which should be in every new browser, Opera 7 is supposed to support DOM 2 even.

And now for the final conclusion. What I really meant was that Theory1 could as well leave out the entire splash page, bringing you directly to the contents. Even though his splash page displays some skills and neat work it's not really necessary, it's just one step extra between the user and the contents.

[Aria]

Originally posted by Brainiac


DHTML/JavaScript can be made to work for just about every browser though, except text-based and most common DHTML libraries are compatible with Opera, Netscape, Internet Explorer and a few others. Also DOM (look-it-up), is a new standard making it possible to code extremly flexible DHTML code that works with all browsers that are supporting DOM. Which should be in every new browser, Opera 7 is supposed to support DOM 2 even.

Yes you can but its not an easy, straightforward process and frankly ... its messy: just look at how many variables you need to declare and consider how tough thats going to be to update at a later date if you need to. I know cos i had to !

My point was that with Flash and XML you can have sthg thats universal, can be ported easily and streams like a dream and its light cos its all vectors. Especially now that you can use Flash 's drawing API methods to do it for you. Its all resizable, it can be updated easily with any text editor so you dont even need to open the source file ever again. And if at a later date your client comes and say I want you to port this project into a pda for instance and reconfigure it for another platform all together, you dont have to go back to the drawingboard.
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[Brainiac]

We're not talking Flash and XML. We're talking a splash page

But yeah, I agree that Flash is a very capable platform for developing web sites, applications, games and much, much more.

But with DOM 2, XHTML and CSS 2 we can't really count out DHTML, or new-coming technqiues either. Using XML and DHTML can be quite knock-out, and combined with server-side scripting we are talking killer combos. Files sizes of a couple of KBs and still great visual result, and automatic generation of code, without the drawbacks of Flash (flash is worse when it comes to displaying text and contents).

And if someone wants it edited it is all about editing one, perhaps two text-files if you have worked methodicly.

[wr1667]

hmm... I just went throught the website...
No doubt the main page is nice to look at, but I feel it is just far too less than what Flash can do. There is a big gap between the content pages with main page... Don't you think so?
If I were the owner, I prefer to have the site runs in frames/..............

[Aria]

Originally posted by Brainiac
We're not talking Flash and XML. We're talking a splash page

I thought we were talking about the menu Nav - hence the DHTML v Flash/XML argument

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