Between Firefox having the Adblock extension, and another extension (forgot the name now) that only renders a flash frame when you select it, i've found flash isn't much of a problem.
My feeling is; Flash is at its worst when used exclusively. As a complement to HTML there are some examples of sites that work well with it. But sites running solely on Flash?
Homestar Runner is pretty decent. But that's about the only (good) example I can give.
Flash sucks especially hard now that CSS and Java exist to do everything Flash can in a conventional page, while being easier to update and offering faster load times.
I think the perfect use of Flash is in a Flash/CSS synergy like Macromedia's own page. It allows for easy updates and conventional printing/screenreading support, yet also featuring the visual flair that Flash can offer.
Flash sucks especially hard now that CSS and Java exist to do everything Flash can in a conventional page, while being easier to update and offering faster load times.
This is simply wrong.
You can use CSS in flash if you like. You can make flash do updates on the fly from almost any publishing system. It loads faster than most comparable JAVA and works better across platforms (although not perfectly).
It's much easier to develope simple stuff in flash than in Java, since you can do advanced stuff with the graphical interface and just some easy scripting.
i must confess that was one of the most powerfull tools ever invented, and it has gaven a lot of enfasys to the motion
I hope you don't write the text for the websites you make, but, moving on, Flash is hardly one of the most powerful tools ever invented.
I also would guess that New is a web developer who uses lots of Flash, or is some other kind of Flash patron. Anyway, your user base has spoken. Most people have some kind of gripe with Flash. You can blame it on the developers. That's fine. But the gun industry does the same thing for guns, as I'm sure you've heard, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The big difference, though, is that the vast majority of gun owners don't abuse their rights. The majority of Flash authors do. On that note, I appreciate the growing amounts of Flash-control that have been popping up in various browser apps, but I'd still like to see some restraint.
I hope you don't write the text for the websites you make, but, moving on, Flash is hardly one of the most powerful tools ever invented.
I also would guess that New is a web developer who uses lots of Flash, or is some other kind of Flash patron. Anyway, your user base has spoken. Most people have some kind of gripe with Flash. You can blame it on the developers. That's fine. But the gun industry does the same thing for guns, as I'm sure you've heard, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The big difference, though, is that the vast majority of gun owners don't abuse their rights. The majority of Flash authors do. On that note, I appreciate the growing amounts of Flash-control that have been popping up in various browser apps, but I'd still like to see some restraint.
Actually I'm a fan of good clean webdesign, keeping in line the current standards. I just think the partly groundless flash-bashing here went a little far. The gun analogy is flawed. Guns are not a technology in themselves, but products of a technology.
Let's say we took gunpowder instead. Can be used for both good and harm. Construction and destruction. It's dangerous, yes. Same thing can be said about flash. But used the right way it can be enriching both to design and functionality.
A great example is Delicious Monster, with soldig, and good web design, (though maybe a bit visually heavy). It uses flash just to give the site some of the extra "life" that, well, digital screen media actually is made to handle quite well...
I don't know. I think the gun analogy works very well given a level of general understanding. I know that the mention of guns really triggers a nerve with 95% of Europeans, but don't write it off just for that.
Flash isn't a technology per se either. Both are implementations of many different pieces of technology. Both are abused. Both cause problems when abused. The severity of the problem is the only big difference. I don't like it when people abuse other means of force either. No one abuses a wheel, or any other fundamental, technological underpinnings.
I don't know. I think the gun analogy works very well given a level of general understanding. I know that the mention of guns really triggers a nerve with 95% of Europeans, but don't write it off just for that.
Flash isn't a technology per se either. Both are implementations of many different pieces of technology. Both are abused. Both cause problems when abused. The severity of the problem is the only big difference. I don't like it when people abuse other means of force either. No one abuses a wheel, or any other fundamental, technological underpinnings.
Well maybe it isn't a technology. Maybe more of a multimedia platform... But I really don't se how it's such a monster. I would like to see a link to a really useful site that flash has ruined. And I mean a useful site.
If it's flash-ad's that people dislike, I can surely understand that. But that has more to do with how the ad-business works. They'll abuse any technology for money. I should know, since I work there.
Ad's are also the reason news-sites survive. Sad but true.
I view is more or less this. A computer is the perfect multimedia tool. It has a better screen and a faster information feed than your TV, cell or anything else. The web is what connects your computer best to all sources of mulitmedia. (Sure you have quicktime and so on...)
Flash is at the moment the best tool for accessing and veiwing different types of multimedia, and also the most widespread. Simple as that.
And a lot of crap is created. true. I flip on my TV and 95% of what's on is probably worse. I see the desire for keeping the net as pure information channel, but that's not really a realistic alternative. Not unless some incredible other multimedia channel shows up, (maybe playstation3 or xbox2 will fix that?). But; There are still infinitely many good pages out there without a single flash in them... I don't see the problem.
I think this falls squarely into the category of 'could have been done *better* in CSS' apart from the pointless and difficult to use spinning navigation list widget which just shouldn't have been done at all.
The navigation bar at the top is particularly bad as it's positively crying out to be done in CSS and is used at the top of a lot of other non-flash pages.
You can even do that image fade effect with cross-browser and accessible CSS:
I think this falls squarely into the category of 'could have been done *better* in CSS' apart from the pointless and difficult to use spinning navigation list widget which just shouldn't have been done at all.
The navigation bar at the top is particularly bad as it's positively crying out to be done in CSS and is used at the top of a lot of other non-flash pages.
You can even do that image fade effect cross-browser and accessible CSS:
holy sh!t! when did apple start using flash on ANYthing? i know their powerschool demo is done in a butt-slow quicktime presentation, but i didn't know they had tried anything in flash on their site.
The problem with this particular (apple) site is that it doesn't bring anything useful to the page. It's just like a big menu, where every link takes you to a new page. It executes tasks that easily be replaced by any normal page. (except for the smal animations and sliding picture).
Speaking about slideshows. This is a perfect example of where flash can be a perfect tool for the task at hand. If you for example want to easily tune timing and fading.
Many photographers have great flash sites to show of their work. Others of course have html sites that are just as great. It depends on how the want their work to come across.
Hmmm. I wonder if I could write some sort of little behind-the-scenes app that blocks all content from the major ad hosting servers.
Euhm...that's quite easy actually, there are lists with ip adresses of ad servers out there, you simply have to cut and past them and route them to some non-valid ip or to localhost or whatever. In Windoooze you can simply edit this file:
C\WINDOWS\\system32\\drivers\\etc\\hosts
I'm sure someone can tell you the OS X equivalent.
Comments
Originally posted by Gavriel
My feeling is; Flash is at its worst when used exclusively. As a complement to HTML there are some examples of sites that work well with it. But sites running solely on Flash?
Homestar Runner is pretty decent. But that's about the only (good) example I can give.
Originally posted by New
Here's a real crappy flash site:
http://www.kdlab.net/
This was actually irony. I think this is a good "all flash" site.
This one is also quite nice: http://web01.colorline.no/colorfantasy/flash.php
warning, it's in norwegian.
I think the perfect use of Flash is in a Flash/CSS synergy like Macromedia's own page. It allows for easy updates and conventional printing/screenreading support, yet also featuring the visual flair that Flash can offer.
Originally posted by Placebo
Flash sucks especially hard now that CSS and Java exist to do everything Flash can in a conventional page, while being easier to update and offering faster load times.
This is simply wrong.
You can use CSS in flash if you like. You can make flash do updates on the fly from almost any publishing system. It loads faster than most comparable JAVA and works better across platforms (although not perfectly).
It's much easier to develope simple stuff in flash than in Java, since you can do advanced stuff with the graphical interface and just some easy scripting.
Originally posted by jonherer
i must confess that was one of the most powerfull tools ever invented, and it has gaven a lot of enfasys to the motion
I hope you don't write the text for the websites you make, but, moving on, Flash is hardly one of the most powerful tools ever invented.
I also would guess that New is a web developer who uses lots of Flash, or is some other kind of Flash patron. Anyway, your user base has spoken. Most people have some kind of gripe with Flash. You can blame it on the developers. That's fine. But the gun industry does the same thing for guns, as I'm sure you've heard, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The big difference, though, is that the vast majority of gun owners don't abuse their rights. The majority of Flash authors do. On that note, I appreciate the growing amounts of Flash-control that have been popping up in various browser apps, but I'd still like to see some restraint.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
I hope you don't write the text for the websites you make, but, moving on, Flash is hardly one of the most powerful tools ever invented.
I also would guess that New is a web developer who uses lots of Flash, or is some other kind of Flash patron. Anyway, your user base has spoken. Most people have some kind of gripe with Flash. You can blame it on the developers. That's fine. But the gun industry does the same thing for guns, as I'm sure you've heard, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The big difference, though, is that the vast majority of gun owners don't abuse their rights. The majority of Flash authors do. On that note, I appreciate the growing amounts of Flash-control that have been popping up in various browser apps, but I'd still like to see some restraint.
Actually I'm a fan of good clean webdesign, keeping in line the current standards. I just think the partly groundless flash-bashing here went a little far. The gun analogy is flawed. Guns are not a technology in themselves, but products of a technology.
Let's say we took gunpowder instead. Can be used for both good and harm. Construction and destruction. It's dangerous, yes. Same thing can be said about flash. But used the right way it can be enriching both to design and functionality.
A great example is Delicious Monster, with soldig, and good web design, (though maybe a bit visually heavy). It uses flash just to give the site some of the extra "life" that, well, digital screen media actually is made to handle quite well...
Flash isn't a technology per se either. Both are implementations of many different pieces of technology. Both are abused. Both cause problems when abused. The severity of the problem is the only big difference. I don't like it when people abuse other means of force either. No one abuses a wheel, or any other fundamental, technological underpinnings.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
I don't know. I think the gun analogy works very well given a level of general understanding. I know that the mention of guns really triggers a nerve with 95% of Europeans, but don't write it off just for that.
Flash isn't a technology per se either. Both are implementations of many different pieces of technology. Both are abused. Both cause problems when abused. The severity of the problem is the only big difference. I don't like it when people abuse other means of force either. No one abuses a wheel, or any other fundamental, technological underpinnings.
Well maybe it isn't a technology. Maybe more of a multimedia platform... But I really don't se how it's such a monster. I would like to see a link to a really useful site that flash has ruined. And I mean a useful site.
If it's flash-ad's that people dislike, I can surely understand that. But that has more to do with how the ad-business works. They'll abuse any technology for money. I should know, since I work there.
Ad's are also the reason news-sites survive. Sad but true.
I view is more or less this. A computer is the perfect multimedia tool. It has a better screen and a faster information feed than your TV, cell or anything else. The web is what connects your computer best to all sources of mulitmedia. (Sure you have quicktime and so on...)
Flash is at the moment the best tool for accessing and veiwing different types of multimedia, and also the most widespread. Simple as that.
And a lot of crap is created. true. I flip on my TV and 95% of what's on is probably worse. I see the desire for keeping the net as pure information channel, but that's not really a realistic alternative. Not unless some incredible other multimedia channel shows up, (maybe playstation3 or xbox2 will fix that?). But; There are still infinitely many good pages out there without a single flash in them... I don't see the problem.
http://www.apple.com/education/hed/students/index.html
I think this falls squarely into the category of 'could have been done *better* in CSS' apart from the pointless and difficult to use spinning navigation list widget which just shouldn't have been done at all.
The navigation bar at the top is particularly bad as it's positively crying out to be done in CSS and is used at the top of a lot of other non-flash pages.
You can even do that image fade effect with cross-browser and accessible CSS:
http://www.clagnut.com/sandbox/imagefades/
Originally posted by stupider...likeafox
Apple get into the act (link posted to another thread about web design):
http://www.apple.com/education/hed/students/index.html
I think this falls squarely into the category of 'could have been done *better* in CSS' apart from the pointless and difficult to use spinning navigation list widget which just shouldn't have been done at all.
The navigation bar at the top is particularly bad as it's positively crying out to be done in CSS and is used at the top of a lot of other non-flash pages.
You can even do that image fade effect cross-browser and accessible CSS:
http://www.clagnut.com/sandbox/imagefades/
holy sh!t! when did apple start using flash on ANYthing? i know their powerschool demo is done in a butt-slow quicktime presentation, but i didn't know they had tried anything in flash on their site.
Speaking about slideshows. This is a perfect example of where flash can be a perfect tool for the task at hand. If you for example want to easily tune timing and fading.
Many photographers have great flash sites to show of their work. Others of course have html sites that are just as great. It depends on how the want their work to come across.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
Hmmm. I wonder if I could write some sort of little behind-the-scenes app that blocks all content from the major ad hosting servers.
Euhm...that's quite easy actually, there are lists with ip adresses of ad servers out there, you simply have to cut and past them and route them to some non-valid ip or to localhost or whatever. In Windoooze you can simply edit this file:
C
I'm sure someone can tell you the OS X equivalent.