1. Are you using flash on your sites? 2. Do you like seeing flash on the sites you visit? I bet the number of 'yes' answers to the first question are more than the second. Here are my answers: 1. Never 2. NO. I don't even flash installed! In my opinion, designers use flash to wow their clients, but this doesn't wow the client's customers. So I guess it comes down to the question: is it more important to wow your customers or generate business for them? Alright, I've rambled long enough!
1. Are you using flash on your sites? Hell no 2. Do you like seeing flash on the sites you visit? Hell no Unfortunatly, I've had to do a flash site for a company (I did my best to disuade them, but failed). Flash is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I don't like it, I've never liked it and I don't see any reason why I will like it. I detest working with it, let alone seeing crappy flash ad's all over the net. ARGH *pulls hair out*
The answer is simple: We all make money by making people staying longer in our site. Flash is one way to NOT do it. LOL
nbope i feel flash in a websites certain death (unless used with care) if you have a new site and design it with flash the biggest problem you have is the text/links within cannot be indexed, and its a lot slower loading compared to plain text. However if you own a high traffic website and do the flash as an add-on the traffic from one site would be enuff for the add-on (like what big companies do when they release a new game/film/etc)
I'm againsed flash as well. I feel that people use it as a way to create a flashy site to show of what they think are skills. But really, all flash is, is a pain in the ass. It can take a long time to load with a dial up or wireless connection.
Have been looking at a few of the answers and based on my experiences:- There are a few Flash sites that look absolutely brilliant and the creative talent is very good. Some sites need to use flash elements to make them interesting, according to their subject matter. I have played with Flash in the past and do believe that Flash has its place on any site as long as its used wisely. A whole page devoted to flash i think is crazy. Small flash elements in places can be very good and allows yuor site to be indexed where neccessary. Remember that Goog and the others are trying to find a way to read and index flash sites too. We shall see. Just my Opinion. Cheers Salamander
As long as you use a sitemap on your homepage google will find the rest. Look at my site; w ww.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Amail-maniac.com The header is made in flash and google indexed my site thanks to a sitemap. Research(1) shows that 97.6% of Web users can experience Macromedia Flash content without having to download and install a player. Try creating a similar website in a dhtml/activeX environment with a compatibilty for about 97% of the users, without using flash. Most webdevelopers can't do this and simply say; only compatible for IE5+. Could you substantiate that with an article that shows us that "95% of website visitors think flash is total crap"? I don't mean to be harsh or anything but what you are saying is very much opinion and very little fact. grz ~~~~ 1 = w ww.macromedia.com/software/flash/survey/
I think there is a huge perception problem with Flash. When we hear Flash (me, anyways) I immediately think of a whole site done in flash. The big thing with flash is user interactivity and much more capable interactions than with scripting, better than scripting with ajax and serverside. In faqct, almost all Flash sites that I go to say that the complete Flash site is dead, for obvious reasons. It just takes to long to load, and yopu are fairly constrained to one size for a pqage. What is now being taught, is for Flash to load external docs and pass info back and forth from MySQL, or any db, with php and asp, etc. It is a component of web pages and webserveices. So, yes, I have decided in the last three months that not only is Flash just becoming bigger, it is going to be the number one popular language to use and platform for web pages. It is the most universally used - every browser is flash capable without proprietary coding. Do you know haw nice that is? The interface is anything you want it to be. I'll bet that many of us use flash components all the time and don't even know it. I am going 100% full tilt with Flash. It just makes way more sense that ajax to me.
I think AJAX is just some javascript-dhtml-activex workaround for something that should have been done with flash
Yeah. That's right because another reason I like Flash so much is that there is about one third the code to write when using it, and components are another 'work flow' enhancement. I sure am glad I hit upon Flash before I spent a year on javascript, although I need that to.
I don't using Flash, but some light-effects maded with Flash is really nice Many simple effects could be done with gif-technology.. to my mind..
I use flash only when i need to promote something (like a contest) or attract visitors attention to something. It is also very important to make a good use of flash, not just some crapy text flying out of nowhere (thats swish) but real, professional designed, flash component.
1. Are you using flash on your sites? No, because it loads slow and doesn't show to visitors who don't have requirements 2. Do you like seeing flash on the sites you visit? Not really.
1. Are you using flash on your sites? I am using flash on some of my sites, but only small animations. 2. Do you like seeing flash on the sites you visit? Only if it's done well, is relevent and doesn't take ages to load.
As stated before an entire site in flash is horrible. A touch of flash only on the homepage can enhance a website in my book. Almost all of my clients ask for it so the common viewer (non-developer) obviously likes it. Personally, I don't use it on my own projects but it never hurts to have another tool on your belt...although it may be a plastic one ;-)
I'm not sure if you can make that connection. I wonder if you asked those same customers if they liked to go to sites that have flash, I think alot of them would say no. I think clients ask for it because they want to "wow" their friends and competitors. Flash is very good at that. I guess my point is that when you're looking for something online, you don't necessarily want to be wow'ed. You want to find the info you're looking for! In my experience flash does not add to the value of the information on the site. So the client asks for flash to impress their friends/competitors, but when their customer comes along they probably "Skip The Flash Intro"! Can somebody point me to a site that has flash in a small portion of the site? I'm interested in seeing what "good flash" looks like. I honestly have NO experience using flash and I started this thread to see if it is worth my time to learn it.
I see your point. I think Novell uses flash well. They use it on their homepage and a few other main pages, but not beyond that point and they aren't overly crazy animations. Again this is just my opinion and please don't consider me a huge flash advocate. I just think there are instances where it is a solid OPTION.
I've always liked learning new things online but i've read so many articles and posts about how flash is bad so i never even bothered learning how to use it.