Quick Question

[Jon101]

I don't know if this is in the right forum, but i was just wondering if some one had a flash site or intro that they wouldn't mind emailing me. I'm new to flash and would love to start altering some existing things... just to get the feel of it.

Thanks much!

Jon

[Twey]

Firstly, Flash is a plugin. Thus, it should never be used to create an entire site (well, it's possible to have an entirely separate site as fallback, but that doubles the required effort and isn't really a neat solution). Flash, like other types of plugin content, should only be used where your users are expecting it: say, a page dedicated to a particular Flash game.

[Jon101]

I see.. But its not rare to come across a complete flash site.

[Twey]

You are, unfortunately, right. These sites are the bane of people like me, who can't run Flash for one reason or another (in my case because I run a 64-bit system) and those with slow Internet connections. Flash is quite small for the content it contains, but still considerably larger than necessary in most cases. Then too, most of the effects for which people use Flash are possible in Javascript.

[Jon101]

Very good point

[xxlfm]

hi, I am new to flash AS too,

I am working on a full flash site, you can take a look, :))

www.1000knots.net/rvh

I really like Flash, AS is powerful, and AJAX is the competetion.

[alexjewell]

Whole flash sites are not smart. If not for size and support reasons, as Twey said, their content cannot be indexed by google and also, screen readers for the blind cannot read flash content.

Now, one of the few uses of flash is for music players. For several reasons, flash works great for this. But flash, like everything else, can be useful in the right context. As Twey said, if you're running a game site, make the games in flash. If you're MySpace, make the music players in flash. If you want to display your artwork, go with an AJAX scroller, not a huge flash file.

And that's my two cents.

[Medyman]

Whole flash sites are not smart. If not for size and support reasons, as Twey said, their content cannot be indexed by google and also, screen readers for the blind cannot read flash content.

Now, one of the few uses of flash is for music players. For several reasons, flash works great for this. But flash, like everything else, can be useful in the right context. As Twey said, if you're running a game site, make the games in flash. If you're MySpace, make the music players in flash. If you want to display your artwork, go with an AJAX scroller, not a huge flash file.

And that's my two cents.

That's a personal opinion. ActionScript is a lot more powerful and less of a haslte than using AJAX.

Yes, full flash sites have their limitations. But done well, they're a lot more effective than your run of the mill HTML/JS/AJAX pages...

Flash/AS allows for a lot more creativity and I find AS to be a lot more intiuitive than any other language.

There are ways to have search engines index Flash. Yes, it requires a little extra work, but so what. So, I find that argument to be null.

The one limit is screen readers, true! My solution to this, I always create two pages, a boring page in html and a dynamic page in flash. So for screen readers and ppl with older/slower computers, the html page will do.

[Twey]

My solution to this, I always create two pages, a boring page in html and a dynamic page in flash. So for screen readers and ppl with older/slower computers, the html page will do.My computer is moderate, thank you very much -- too new for Flash, in fact. Creating two pages is indeed an option, but not a very appealing one, since it becomes necessary to maintain both, doubling the maintainer's workload.

[mburt]

doubling the maintainer's workload.
Depending on how the pages are setup. If they both use an include pointing to the same file in one way or another, this could work well.

[alexjewell]

mburt, sure, of course if they both use includes. And I'm not saying that flash shouldn't ever be used, either. As I said, it has its place.

Now, Medyman, I hope you realize that you followed your statement telling me what I said was a personal opinion with a lot of your own personal opinions. That's one of the great things about web design, there's so many options and so many ways to do something. Everyone has things they prefer and things they're weary of. If every designer agreed with you, sir, every site would be in flash.