S
SpaceGirl
The said:Every time I see a Flash website with tiny, unreadable text, I know that
there is a designer relying on this to be true.
Bad deisgn will still be bad design regardless of the format used,
that's a given.
It's even worse when I visit a site and have to scroll all over the place
to enjoy the content - again, mainly due to Flash.
Uh-huh. Agreed.
Plus, Flash is a common but proprietary format. It's up to version 6(?)
Version 7 (MX 2004).
now. Do you want to use a format that may need reauthoring in a
commercial package? In plain words, you could be forced to buy the latest
version of the Flash software at some point to re-engineer your content.
Only if badly designed. It's just a front end for your data (which
should be driving your site). Flash MX and MX 2004 are both excellant
XML parsers, with the 2004 version supporting xpath and XSLT style
transformations... basically you can have your movie entirely driven by
the data it sits on top of. Change the data, and your movie changes too...
Will Flash index properly on a search engine? Maybe. Newer search engines
will index your site. Eventually. I think.
Google does, which is all that matters really.
Flash can "bulk up" a website without returning much for the investment.
The same can be said of any graphic format, really, but 100k+ Flash sites
are ubiquitous.
But Flash also streams... a well designed Flash site could be working
after just loading a few Kb. It might take more to get the fancy stuff
down, but Flash can be structured quite easily for fast downloads. The
is a HUGE advantage over HTML, as in Flash you have complete control
over what loads when and what feedback is given while it is loading. Try
loading a large lump of tabulated data in HTML and it can take a long
time before the user sees feedback in some browsers. In Flash it could
be inline, or give you a progress bar.... etc etc...
Flash has some big design overheads, has a few accessibility holes, and
is quite hard to work with (and expensive, given you have to buy
Macromedia Flash) but in a fairly strict design environment and given a
tight brief to work to, it can easily be a far better solution than HTML.
It's not all sunshine.
That's for sure. I *hate* programming in Flash... but then, I hate
programming, period
The Doormouse
x The Miranda
--
x theSpaceGirl (miranda)
# lead designer @ http://www.dhnewmedia.com #
# remove NO SPAM to email, or use form on website #