Flash kills me: with the client at the court...

[alberto sejas]

... after a lot of work...

I made this site in 2001

http://www.seitenpfleger.de/ecksteinggup200

After three months development, the client said the site has a lot of errors, and he want his money back. Two of these errors are:

1-The animations are not working fluently under macintosh (netscape).
2-The Print feature (contact>map) is not working fast enough.

The expert said there are some bugs in it, which make this site unable to be used (!), but he didn´t show where bugs are. It would mean, if the judge believe him, i have to pay the whole money back (ca. 4000 Euro, he didn´t pay the last 2000 Euro, and his lawyer, and the process costs, and the expert -who cashed 3000-). For me, after the financial trouble, it could mean i get never a flash job again.

If someone can help me, i´m open for every advice.

[rafiki55]

Are the problems not fixable?

For the map, you could easily speed it up. And if needed, tone down the animations for a faster load.

Animations on the mac? Hmm maybe someone in the Mac forum could help you out.

It looks like to me that all those are just minor problems and that they can be fixed fairly easily.

I say, fix them, finish the project, get the money, stay on good terms with the client and never do work for them again.

[hurricaneone]

This is an interesting demonstration.

Contracts are great, and help define where the designer/customer relationship stands at the beginning of a project.

Seems to me though that as soon as 'good faith' has been lost, there's many a designer who will find a contract about as useful as a toilet paper umbrella in monsoon season, simply because they do not have the financial depth to risk losing a legal fight brought about when trying to enforce a contract.

So, paper youself up good 'n tight, but remember, when the chips hit the fan and the friendly relationship is good and dead, as a designer it's probably better to return the cash and live to fight another day than have yourself in this position, potentially owing site costs, fees etc.

Nasty situation.

Anyway, my advice, free of charge you'll be happy to notice, is that in these two years (two years? this has been going on for two years??) I cannot believe you have not offered to just sit down and make a new site for this guy, following whatever his looney ideas are, resigning yourself to the fact that it won't be a portfolio piece, but then again, you won't find yourself potentially out of pocket for a really big bundle of cash.

And anyway, sorry to say it, but your demo looks rather open source to me, so I don't see what took so long to develop it in the first place.

Two years ago. I can't get over that.

BTW, alberto, if you're looking for a series of site checks to back up your side of the argument with positive feedback about your site design, I'd ask over in the Site Check forum.

[alberto sejas]

Originally posted by rafiki55
Are the problems not fixable?

For the map, you could easily speed it up. And if needed, tone down the animations for a faster load.

Animations on the mac? Hmm maybe someone in the Mac forum could help you out.

It looks like to me that all those are just minor problems and that they can be fixed fairly easily.

I say, fix them, finish the project, get the money, stay on good terms with the client and never do work for them again.

Well, some problems could be fixable, if i find them: my printer prints this in one minute, the printer of my lawyer too (epson and hewlett packard). That would be acceptable for the client but he means his printer need two or three minutes for the job. The expert tested three printers, with four, five and thirteen minutes. He says he can not find the exactly reason for it, but it MUST (!) be a programming mistake. What can i say...

The Macromedia support said the print function was new in Flash 5, and in 2001 far of being a perfect function, or as good as in other programs.

The animation performance is known in the mac forum. Netscape for mac had a bug which slowed down the animation performance. I have found a book where this bug is shown. The expert says again, it´s my fault (without showing my mistake).

Anyway, do we have the responsability of performance in every computer? Do we have the responsability of speed in every printer?

If a client says "fine, but in MY computer and wiht MY printer" ist not working well enough", has he the right to get his money back?

Do i have to go to jail, because a function of flash (print) is not good enough, or because some computers in this world are slow? I find the situation just very very very crazy, and far from reality.

Hurricanone: this site was about a year ago in site check. As open source would be great: the concept of the navigation is to mirror the three bars of his logo, i can not use this idea for another client. I´m not looking for nice comments.

[Musicman]

Hi,

the "expert" should be an expert in making websites, not only an expert in measuring times. Maybe if you find some sites made by that "expert", it would be easy to demonstrate that a specific printer gets extremely slow on the expert's work.

BTW: they are not asking for money from you for the spelling and grammar errors in the content

Musicman

[alberto sejas]

... musicman! To print his site... But as you can see, the expert (www.seitenpfleger.de) can only make HTML sites.

The original text is german, the client let it translate, my luck: he didn´t say at the court, the text mistakes are from me. He colected thirteen mistakes, the first one was that you can see the word "enter", and if you press "enter" (at the keyboard) nothing happens (!). That is a mistake in the design of information structure. I asked before if he wanted another word or text, but he didn´t answer. He doesn´t want these problems fixed, he only wants his money back, but the mistakes he colected to get it are ridiculous, so i was sure any expert would say "this is crazy". Wrong.

Rafiki: you make me curious, how could i easily speed the map printing up? Probably you know something i don´t know.

[Musicman]

Ok,

go to www.seitenpfleger.de/wiese.htm - there should be an animation as promised by the text but there is not. Clicking the "get player" button with mozilla / linux brings up a macromedia page saying "we are unable to locate a web player that matches your platform and browser" - not really a recommendation for a company that offers website maintenance. BTW - it is not the wrong player that makes the movies not play ... they are riding flight 404

Musicman

[somlemeg]

Hay, why not start a poll and see how long time it takes to print the map. For me it took 35 sec on a Cannon S630.