Comments on: Why Flash still beats everything else on the Web (or “How I spent my weekend on the Web”)

By: junjun80

junjun80 — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:42:57 +0000

It’s the damn internet people! It’s like saying let’s start the New World Order and let the earth be ruled by one government! The web is the web, people can do whatever they’re comfortable with. If it works and displays the content to the end user than for my liking, that’s what the intended purpose was in the first place. As long as my car runs on 2 cylinders, then at least it’s getting me somewhere! Screw standards, you standards people have junk looking websites. Whatever happened to good ‘ol “web design?” HTML, invented the internet but yet you’ve got people arguing that CSS is how the web page should be layed out. What, so you can do a ‘view source’ on me and point and laugh if it’s still sitting in tables? Damn, people piss me off. I fully support Flash. I like a medium where people sit there guessing, how’d he do that?

By: cfJeff

cfJeff — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 22:04:46 +0000

I think Microsoft is making a tool for this.

By: Naphthalene

Naphthalene — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 08:35:15 +0000

Well, messy, if you won’t say “lol,” then I will.

No, I won’t…I’m presently feeling some of the initial frustration that propmted Vito to start this whole thing in the first place: I’m working on a site for a “client” (all right, my dad), and CSS is just…not…working. But then again, I demand pixel-level control If someone wants to jack with my styles and make his font 300em, be my guest — the 99.9999% who leave it as-is should see what I want them to see. Except CSS and tables is like, well, two things that really, really don’t like each other’s guts.

LOL.

By: messy

messy — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 23:27:22 +0000

nah, i’m not trying to pick a fight, or pick on vito.
many many times i’ve been assumed to be aggressive through typing – it’s the nature of typed communication – unless you dress up your words. after years of writing things, i’m kinda sick of dressing up my words with extra sugar in order to simply sound neutral in writing.

so i mean no aggression or offence, but i’m also not going to get all flowery, or use emoticons, or say ‘lol’ alot.

i really enjoy a hearty discourse and i’m glad it has occured to some degree here.

By: VeryVito

VeryVito — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 22:31:49 +0000

Hey now, no bar fights at Turdhead! Personally, I’m glad to see some discussion, regardless. Funny which posts seem to strike a nerve.

By: Peppermint Patty

Peppermint Patty — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 22:16:21 +0000

Okay, I watched this drama unfold, and now here’s my two cents:

Messy, I’m not sure what your beef with Vito (or Flash) is, but as he and several others have pointed out already, it sounds to me like you’re both saying the same thing. Your arguments are sound, but I don’t see where they’re really different from his. Vito’s been saying Flash isn’t everything and markup languages are essential since the initial post, but somehow you seem to think he wants the w3c dismantled? A little less self-righteous frothing, and you might see that you agree with the guy.

To many people, differences in the way browsers render cascading style sheets IS maddening. As a freelancer, I can say “no” to a client, but if you work for someone else, try telling it to your boss. When she sees someone else apparently making it work, you’d better do it too – no matter how you feel a web browser should work!

By: messy

messy — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:41:24 +0000

excellent points and references John. Obviously flash has come a long way.

I have to say though – the jkrowling site may have become a shining beacon to accesibility – unless you can see. i found that to be a most difficult site as far is usability goes. i had to close it after fumbling around for a while on it. I’d give it a giant F for a grade – i couldn’t use the site. i dunno, maybe i’m not the audience.

as for flash lite, i’d rather see it used as a standard platform for phone interfaces than i would for surfing. Then again, i think flash is a better tool for app-dev interface design than for web communication. i have future plans to monkey with using flash as the front end to a c# application since i think winforms blow.

i’m glad to hear the feedback on this, even if the source of the good feedback is not the author (not trying to be mean, veryvito, but i think that reading the comments speaks for itself).

I can understand the love for flash, but for the most part, i do not consider it to be a web development tool. it plays a part ON the web, and IN pages, but i consider it an optional accessory so far as the web in general is concerned.

By: VeryVito

VeryVito — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:11:30 +0000

Thanks, John! I was compiling a list to address most of these same points, but you nailed ‘em better than I could have (and certainly with more authority). Truth be told, I use a lot of different tools and technologies for developing personal and professional projects; Flash is just one of the more enjoyable ones. (Ironically, anybody that knew me four years ago would be shocked to hear me say it — There was a time when I kicked, screamed, fought and eventually hired others just to keep from getting involved in “that #!%@! timeline thing.” Now it’s my comfort food — along with Perl, my first love.)

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:36:06 +0000

Great conversation, thanks. (My take is that sometimes we need predictable presentation, sometimes we don’t, and that predictable presentations are easier to achieve with a predictable implementation of the underlying rendering engine. Both approaches are good, complementary.)

Some particular Flash-oriented points in the comments:

o HTML is great for text-blogging, agreed, although I’m still not sure which spec describes the ideal behavior of ham-sammich delivery….

o JAWS and Window Eyes both do text-to-speech for SWF content, and in fact support it in a more configurable way that HTML work does:
http://www.macr.../accessibility/
http://weblogs....m/accessibility
http://www.goog...h+accessibility

o Googlebot does slurp text in SWF… do a search on “contrary evidence filetype:swf” to confirm, or “dowdell swf seo” for more info.

o For versioning, you can publish to SWF8 format, or SWF7 format, or SWF6 format or whatever. Some browsers do minimum-version testing (ActiveX in IE/Win, eg), others will try to play it. The constraint is the rendering engine each consumer has happened to install. (Flash Player 8 flew past Firefox in its first week, past Windows XP Service Pack 2 in its first month, and is now at about the level of all Windows XP installations.) Bottom line: You don’t need the *latest* Player to view predictably, just the appropriate Player for the file version you’ve chosen.

o “Nokia phone” is a good example. We definitely need to design differently for different sizes of display, and different input devices. (and different social use too!) Nokia is already a big backer of the Flash Lite rendering libraries:
http://www.goog...media.com+nokia

o “Content” is both medium and message — the presentation influences how the message is perceived. Rephrased, text ain’t the only means of information in the world, and in fact you could argue that straight English-heavy work is less accessible than integrated use of text, image, animation, sound and video.

Good thread of commentary here, thanks.

jd/adobe

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:32:01 +0000

If you site is about delivering an “experience” to the end user I agree with you 100%. That’s what Flash is great at. If the purpose of your site is to deliver content, then I have to disagree. In that case your job (for lack of a better word) is to deliver the content to the end user in an easily digestable way. And they should be able to do what they want with it in order to consume your content… i.e increase the font size to 500%, pass it thru a screen reader, project it on to a wall, copy it and paste it, send it to their cell phone, and on and on and on.