General Public ready for All Flash Sites???

[riceraver]

I have come to the conclusion that although all flash sites look really cool, people, in general, are not ready for this. what's your thoughts??

[Dawgbeat]

I feel that the term ALL-Flash site should be used very loosely, there are many things used along side of flash (on a good flash site anyways). but i dont think people are ready for all flash sites either, i think an html "site" thats included with a flash "site" is the best choice, and one thing people really really really need to stop doin is placing the godman "if you dont have flash4/5 get it here" link in their dman flash movie, if they can see that then they have it haha

[thatbillguy]

I'm still not sure that the world is ready for many of the horribly-rendered html sights we've all seen. Unless a tool is used correctly- whether it's Flash or DreamWeaver or whatever- the end result is going to be poor.
It mainly boils down to: Is the site usable/navigable and functional? Is the site's content taking a backseat to distracting animation? Is the download time acceptable? And of course; Does it suit the client's needs?
Whether it's Flash or html, if the answers are yes, the end user is ready to view your site.
-Bill

[phooka]

From my personal, limited point of view: it depends of the designer.

There are horrid HTML sites where navigation is absolutely frustrating.

IMHO, if flash is used in a cool, coherent manner, it can help navigation by making it more easily understood by newbies. Simply imagine a site where a voice explains you everything you need to do and huge buttons guide you through it...

Broadband will make this possible. A flash designed site can be more pro- Jakob Nielsen's approach to easy navigation than classic HTML sites.

Regards,

[Eddie Hillegers]

Originally posted by phooka
From my personal, limited point of view: it depends of the designer.

There are horrid HTML sites where navigation is absolutely frustrating.

IMHO, if flash is used in a cool, coherent manner, it can help navigation by making it more easily understood by newbies. Simply imagine a site where a voice explains you everything you need to do and huge buttons guide you through it...

Broadband will make this possible. A flash designed site can be more pro- Jakob Nielsen's approach to easy navigation than classic HTML sites.

Regards,

i think it already is, especialy if you use flash to create a navbar and use a frameset to load html content pages.

eddie

[phooka]

Hi EH!

I think Jakob's main concern about flash navigation is that IT IS NOT known by surfers. Since a correct flash nav normally implies to forget the back button from the browser and other traditional browser navigation enhancements, in Jakob's oppinion navigation can be tricky.

However, when making a site I am not thinking about usual surfers with years of experience, but in NEW USERS, complete newbies. In their case there is nothing like "traditional navigation", so any kind of new navigation like the one flash provides should be addressed to them...

Regards,
david

[Dowenger]

I believe, that if the site is really well pot together, then people will flock to it

[Subway]

Originally posted by phooka
However, when making a site I am not thinking about usual surfers with years of experience, but in NEW USERS, complete newbies.

Yes, exactly and this is way I love my job right now, I don't have to make sites for that audience.

Game Kits and experimented users is actually my target group.

[XU1]

Most of us at least have an advantage, because we remember early html sites, animated clip art, then Java, java applets. We in effect evolved with the pace. At that time the internet was viewed by the general populace as a plaything for "Geeks".So in some ways they are disadvantaged
Because they have to catch up in many ways. I think maybe the pace is going a bit too fast for most users who are coming on line.

Tony

[CNO]

I think, approaching the question as I read it, it's an all or nothing proposition. As much as I currently generally dislike all-Flash sites, I think people will need to forge ahead and make a really killer all-Flash site and continue to do so, so people get used to them. Right now the majority of all-Flash sites we see are extremely targeted, whether they be novelty sites or sites of design firms which the general populace will never see.

This, of course, takes into account what many of the people in this thread have already said - it makes little sense to make an all-Flash site unless it is called for - quite a few of the things that vexed Jakob Nielson, such as non-searchable text, are indeed reasons to avoid using Flash. However, the program can also be used to provide levels of interactivity and animation unrivaled by any other technology out there (even things like searchable text can be implemented, but will be missed by the majority because it's not a matter of a checkbox.

[sapra]

My company wants to escape the route of doing all that javascript and changing scripts etc by using flash and since the penetration is about 78% of the users have flash 4.0 we are programming a same replica of an HTML site in flash.
What is ironical is that we would not like to mention to our clients that we use flash. So the gist is that the flash can be used as effeciently as possible with excellent navigation (not more than 2 clicks deep and even without the need of the back button ever!!!) but FLASH still has some negative conotation attatched with it...
I have written this previously and i would like to stress even now that until flash 5.0 gets 100% penetration the likely status of flash wont be upgraded in the minds of VC's/angel investors.
Cheers
gary sapra

[Joseph8]

Flash 5 has unlocked the ability to create web applications rather than presentations. As broadband reveals itself so will the wonders of net applications and appliances. Flash 5 is sitting in a great position of being able to be the front end for nifty internet database solutions to everything from word processing to medical searches. Usability then becomes the selling point.

[bhughes]

Yes, the public is more than ready...but designers? not at all. what i continue to see on sites is the excitement of creating a flash site over riding simple design principles. cool effects, sounds, and neat garbage all looks great, but seldom actually does anything for the site except that...and becomes cumbersome. look at all the unnecessary dragable windows that can all close an change color and whatnot that are out there...they're cool, sure, but what the hell do they do for the viewer other than a first-time-viewer-oh-look-isnt-that-neat. line, shape, color, usability. dont forget those ones folks.

[bhughes]

Yes, the public is more than ready...but designers? not at all. what i continue to see on sites is the excitement of creating a flash site over riding simple design principles. cool effects, sounds, and neat garbage all looks great, but seldom actually does anything for the site except that...and becomes cumbersome. look at all the unnecessary dragable windows that can all close an change color and whatnot that are out there...they're cool, sure, but what the hell do they do for the viewer other than a first-time-viewer-oh-look-isnt-that-neat. line, shape, color, usability. dont forget those ones folks.

as far as all flash sites. html still can be used for great benefit. the key is to use them TOGETHER. it can be done, and done well, and look just as good as an all flash site, while retaining features that javascript, dhtml, and html do best.

designers just get too flash-happy sometimes.

[mgb]

I think a well thought out flash site can stream even more effectively than html. It is great for, say, a photography site where images can download in the background while the user views other images. But it has a long way to go b4 it catches up with html in regard to sites that require a lot of user input. I once visited a forum done completely in flash and it was disasterous. Very slow - and the designers took the liberty of locking an anchor to my mouse pointer which slowed it down considerably; it was a hugh green anchor thing jerking along after the pointer. Whew.

One thing I don't get about Flash and find disappointing is the poor rendering of text; it often looks blurry (egomedia is a site which is marred by this). What I don't understand is that vector graphics are supposed to be very crisp - as they are in Illustrator. But flash is vector based and yet fonts look terrible sometimes. What's the story with this?

I think flash is still in it's experimental stages, but very promising...


~ mgb

[sapra]

Originally posted by mgb
I think a well thought out flash site can stream even more effectively than html. It is great for, say, a photography site where images can download in the background while the user views other images. But it has a long way to go b4 it catches up with html in regard to sites that require a lot of user input. I once visited a forum done completely in flash and it was disasterous. Very slow - and the designers took the liberty of locking an anchor to my mouse pointer which slowed it down considerably; it was a hugh green anchor thing jerking along after the pointer. Whew.

One thing I don't get about Flash and find disappointing is the poor rendering of text; it often looks blurry (egomedia is a site which is marred by this). What I don't understand is that vector graphics are supposed to be very crisp - as they are in Illustrator. But flash is vector based and yet fonts look terrible sometimes. What's the story with this?

I think flash is still in it's experimental stages, but very promising...


~ mgb

Hi michael,
The problem is that Flash Antialliases every font and nothing can be done about it and the only way you can achieve a little bit of sharpness is with _sans and typewritter font.
It works well for me,
Cheers
gary

[mgb]

Hi Gary,

yes, I use Verdana, Helvetica and Arial a lot. I would not touch serif below 24pt. How is the work coming along? Still bending action script around Impossible corners? haha.

[sapra]

Originally posted by mgb
Hi Gary,

yes, I use Verdana, Helvetica and Arial a lot. I would not touch serif below 24pt. How is the work coming along? Still bending action script around Impossible corners? haha.

yes sir,
Still in HOT HOT waters...and now got another impossible task....firstly I had to go through checkboxes and now I have to go through the radio buttons which belong to each checkbox...so have to iterate through the radio buttons two dimensionally and then again concatenate etc....Im just tired of this man!!! just tired...well better go work.
Cheers
gary
PS: also in those expanding menu's one more problem has come up...one of the criteria's have double expansion (menu in a menu..)

[Kinomation]

I like using Flash because is give so much more freedom in desinging interaces than html, but so far none of my clients have shared my enthusiasm, and as soon as the word "plugin" is mentioned scares them away from the Flash option.

[hiker]

well.. as a web developer, what i see is too many sites that assume that everyone is on a broadband connection already.... while it's nice to see ppl pushing the envelope and flexing the limits of our systems, from a practical standpoint, we as designers must still produce sites that are viewable and easily usable by the average surfer.... due to where i live at the moment i can only get a dial-up connection, and due to phone equipment can usually only get about 26K out of my 56K connection. however, this is fairly typical of the average net user, and statistics show the majority still using a connection that is effectively around 28.8K....and that is not likely to change anytime in the near future.... there are so many all flash sites that i give up on after waiting 5min or more for a download to begin.....and most users would not wait that long!! i use flash a lot for nav bars and embedded sections in html pages and try for a blend of the two - mostly to get something downloaded in a reasonable time - and this, to me is the big problem - finding the line between how much flash i can get in and still have a site that downloads to the user in a reasonable time - some of my hybrid pages download much faster than a straight html page of similar design, but when we start getting to all flash pages and all flash sites, we start to bog down - so while these neat, clever all-flash extravenganzas are fun to watch (when you can)... we still have to remember most of us are here for the average user.... and in fact, when i see another designer who's own website will not download and play in a reasonable time i figure that he couldn't/wouldn't produce one for a client that would either.... just my opinion....