April 22, 201214 yr I just wanted to hear from some designers here about flash sites. I love them, personally. But, they also have to be designed just right. It is not just that, but thanks to the apple people, I can actually make more money from them, because some phones hate the flash so much, that the customer needs to buy an app/mobile site. I would think, that alone would make developers love them. (all in the pacakge deal). I guess the other reason why I love them, is they are so artful; and one can tell just how creative the designer is. I just wanted to hear opinions on this, from this forum. Thanks....cheers!
April 22, 201214 yr Simple really. I like my sites to be found the se serps, as do my clients. Really rather pointless having a website that looks great, winks at you on arrival, makes ya tea and blows ya....if people can't find it, then it's dead in the water Edited April 22, 201214 yr by roothost
April 22, 201214 yr People that build full sites in Flash are the sort of people who bake cakes using only sugar.it was only ever intended to compliment the current design, but as ever it became the latest trend and got ruined beyond all expectation. As Root said above, I also like my sites to be discoverable on the search engines. Everything (well pretty much ) can now be done without the resource hungry, closed system that is Flash.
April 22, 201214 yr I guess the other reason why I love them, is they are so artful; and one can tell just how creative the designer is. Much as it pains me to use your own words against you, this is why I hate flash sites. Most of the time they seem to serve the ego of the 'designer' far more that the needs of their clients. There is no justification for making someone's business message more difficult to engage with. Flash narrows your audience, it gets in the way of results. It closes the door to easy and affordable site management, and it's bloated out of all proportion. Screen-readers won't touch it, it flouts just about every accessibility guideline out there, and frankly it's just plain bad manners in my opinion. I'm not against people making money, but selling somebody a poorly-supported website just so you can then sell them a mobile app is disingenuous and will probably come back to bite you in the arse one day. Designers who think that being 'creative' is what they do need to stop. There's being 'creative' and there's designing a good site. Rarely are the two seen holding hands. The kind of creative your clients are looking for is a problem solving kind of creative. In other words, how to make a website that provides a return on investment. Drawing a pretty picture and animating it using a badly-supported and outdated platform is not creative. It's a form of onanism (apologies if you need to look that up, but this forum will auto-censor the more commonly-used word).
April 22, 201214 yr It's not about hating Flash but rather it's suitability for todays web is getting more and more limited. For sites that run purely on Flash content: 1. Poor accessibility 2. Usability issues (eg back button, can't generally bookmark "inner pages") 3. Restricted seach engine indexing 4. Long download times - why download Mb's of a Flash movie when you can say the same thing with a couple of dozen Kb's worth of text content 5. Limited device support (iPhone, iPad and others) 6. High cost of ownership - Flash updates can be expensive compared to standard HTML/CSS/JS model In it's day Flash excelled at providing things like streaming media and games, remembering that before Flash this sort of content was often served using Java which it largely replaced. Now times and the technology landscape have changed again and Flash is on a steady decline, how many sites run on all-Flash content nowdays, not as many as there used to be
April 22, 201214 yr It's not about hating Flash [...] Not for you maybe, but I'm out of the closet on this one
April 22, 201214 yr Snippage Pretty much all of the above. There was a time when what flash did, it did well. Unfortunatly it didn't do it for very long and now we have multiple ways to achieve the end goal without reverting to needing a plugin based system and many of these new ways are better and more efficient. There should never have been a time when flash was used for complete web sites.
April 22, 201214 yr Pretty much all of the above. There was a time when what flash did, it did well. Unfortunatly it didn't do it for very long and now we have multiple ways to achieve the end goal without reverting to needing a plugin based system and many of these new ways are better and more efficient. There should never have been a time when flash was used for complete web sites. *Trying to conjure up counter-argument purely to be argumentative* ... ... .. *Fail. No counter-argument found*
April 25, 201214 yr I dont think its anything to do with flash its self. The way the web is working now people can access sites on there phones and ipads. Flash does not work on mobile devices properly so when you view a flash site on your device it looks broken and horrible.. i love flash sites my self but as a business prospective its probably not the best idea to use flash all the time.
April 25, 201214 yr I dont think its anything to do with flash its self. Maybe you need to go back and read all the replies in this thread again. It definitely is flash itself...
April 25, 201214 yr Although I agree with all the comments, being an artist at heart I do think there is a space for websites for the more creative type of website. You just have to make sure it's correct for the audience. I remember studying the Donnie Darko website at University - it's still live and still great! It's a crazy film so a perfect excuse for a crazy flash site: http://www.donniedarkofilm.com/ And google can index flash sites, apparently - but I know nothing more on this matter. Edited April 25, 201214 yr by mrchristoph
April 25, 201214 yr People that build full sites in Flash are the sort of people who bake cakes using only sugar.it was only ever intended to compliment the current design, but as ever it became the latest trend and got ruined beyond all expectation. As Root said above, I also like my sites to be discoverable on the search engines. Everything (well pretty much ) can now be done without the resource hungry, closed system that is Flash. This echo's my feelings. I first visted flashkit.com back in the late 90's and downloaded a copy of Macromedia! Flash. Soon, I was creating flash to compliment and replace my html in many cases until I realized like many this is not the way forward. Thankfully, we now have JQuery, HTML5, AJAX etc to work with to create the same functionality. Simply put, I think flash was a good technology and had a purpose however for me, it's not a technology I'd bet on going forward. I'd be careful about using flash in your work as has been advised.
April 25, 201214 yr I'm kind of with BlueDreamer on this. Many a time have I enjoyed watching a video or playing a game or looking at a cutesy animation that was done in Flash. And it does remain a bit smoother than the jquery alternatives. Unfortunately for web design and building sites, it's not really appropriate and therefore getting phased out. It's not really a question of loving or hating it, just a big qustion mark over whether it should be used in websites. Personally I haven't used it for at least 2 years now.
April 25, 201214 yr It's just the trend at the moment to scoff at flash. It has it's place for sure, it's still the best platform to use for fully immersive interactive experiences, and it's still more powerful for handling videos (though i'm looking forward to <video> catching up). Sometimes accessibility and SEO isn't a priority (check anything on FWA for examples, for sure the people creating those sites know there stuff and are probably masters of HTML5/CSS3 as well). Some sites are better in flash, though these are typically good for short-term campaign sites to support the launch of a product. it's not going to go away and it's still a relevant technology. People are expecting it to have a bit more respect again in 2012: http://www.netmagazine.com/features/15-top-web-design-and-development-trends-2012 Frankly i'm glad Flash isn't in Vogue at the moment. It feels like the web is really being allowed to breath some fresh air.
April 26, 201214 yr Interesting article today: Flash May Not Be Dead But It's Not Feeling Well Edited April 26, 201214 yr by ElanMan
April 26, 201214 yr Simple really. I like my sites to be found the se serps, as do my clients. Really rather pointless having a website that looks great, winks at you on arrival, makes ya tea and blows ya....if people can't find it, then it's dead in the water Well google is putting effort into indexing flash content. Would that swing you the other way? Personally I hate them, but I do think they still have a place in the web world.
April 27, 201214 yr Well google is putting effort into indexing flash content. Would that swing you the other way? Personally I hate them, but I do think they still have a place in the web world. No not really (honesty is the best policy ) Personally, I see no reason for flash in web design. There isn't much that cannot be done using other methods.
April 27, 201214 yr as everyone has sadi why use a closed system when in todays web world the likes of JS and CSS 3 can do the majority of flash and its cross browser,platform,device capable
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