[starman]

Why? Some sites use it sparingly, other's use it so much that even I hate it. Then there are sites like homestarrunner.com that couldn't exist without it, and it's one of the most popular sites on the planet. So...why hate Flash? Give some good examples, don't just regurgitate what your friends on modems tell you.

Mike

[wataru]

I am one of those guys on modems, dammit. I hate it when it's used for navigation and in ads.

It's just like tofu: Tofu is good when it's there on its own merits, not when it's filling in for something else, like meat. Flash is fine for animation. But it breaks the web when used for navigation and it's slow as hell to load on dialup.

[Cipher13]

I HATE FLASH.

There are some AMAZING examples of it - but I still hate it.

[Adam Betts]

Keyword: Inconsistency

There's millions of different flash layout and majority of them are very unpredictable. Most of the time you just don't know what will happen if you click the buttons. I want to enjoy surfing the web, not figuring out what I'm supposed to do.

I don't mind Flash if it was used for entertainment purpose (like Homestarrunner, games, etc), but for "real" websites? Absolutely not. You can only find one or two "real" Flash websites that are somehow usable. Even they can be entirely done in XHTML/CSS with little or no problem.

Maybe I'm jealous, biased or not up-to-date person but I just don't see the benefits of going Flash instead of XHTML/CSS.

[scaught]

use the right tool for the right job. sometimes flash is just unnecessary bling.

[gomanute]

gomanute noticed that starman's post is written in the same style as ankle_brains, unkle_brains, and John F. Smith's inane question threads.

[MOTHERWELL]

TokyoPlastic

If you view that and still hate Flash you have some issues.

[phoenixboy70]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
Maybe I'm jealous, biased or not up-to-date person but I just don't see the benefits of going Flash instead of XHTML/CSS.

what do you think about the argument that flash has its own font management? the only way to use an "exotic" font in html is to export the fonts as images...

i used to be really into flash (mostly because i hated the layout options you used to get with tables, "netscape" problems etc.). i still think there are some pretty cool sites out there. but these days i use almost exclusively html/css.

[Superchicken]

Flash has it's purposes, but ultimately it's designed for MOVIES, not static pages. There are some fine examples of flash used OK, the Supertones' website for example has little flash in their nav but it's smaller than a comparable set of gifs would be. That sorta thing I don't mind. That said sites that use for example audio in the flash but don't have a way to shut it off. Those are awful. Jeremy Camp's current one... I love the guy and the site's nice and all but just... the flash in it makes it to cumbersome...

[skalie]

The Broadmoor Hotel is an often quoted example of the possible functionality of Flash.

Think of how many times you've battled with pages and pages of forms to try and find out the price of an airticket.

[dampeoples]

I like flash for movies, but as has been said before, I think it's counter intuitive for navigation. If you want to show me something, show it to me, let's not play 'find the content', that's not cool.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by phoenixboy70:
what do you think about the argument that flash has its own font management? the only way to use an "exotic" font in html is to export the fonts as images...

i used to be really into flash (mostly because i hated the layout options you used to get with tables, "netscape" problems etc.). i still think there are some pretty cool sites out there. but these days i use almost exclusively html/css.

That's one of the few advantages Flash have right now but most of them are not really necessary.

I recall hearing about CSS adding custom fonts support in next major release soon though. I think that will be much more cleaner and less bloated because for example people could disable custom fonts in preferences if they don't want to see exotic fonts. With Flash, you're forced to see it.

[phoenixboy70]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
I recall hearing about CSS adding custom fonts support in next major release soon though.

hey, good news.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

Originally posted by MOTHERWELL:
TokyoPlastic

If you view that and still hate Flash you have some issues.

thats exactly what people are talking about. i dont hate it but its unnecessary bling.

[Eriamjh]

What I hate about SOME flash sites is not knowing where to click!

[starman]

Ok, here's why I ask. There's something I wanted to do for my web site which was completely possible in CSS, but horribly impractical from a management point of view.

As someone brought up, Flash has font management. One thing I despise about the web is that you're confined to a limited number of common fonts. Well, for my site I wanted to use Futura. The problem is, not everyone has it, so I'd have to use Trebuchet . Why should I, the designer, be limited in what I want to present?

So, the only way to do it would be to rasterize the text. The problem with THAT is I want to display it over a background of marble. Sure, I could use a PNG, but IE6 on Windows doesn't handle it properly, so the only OTHER way to do it would be to rasterize the text over the background. That works, but if you shift things around on the navigation page, EVERYTHING needs to be redone.

After fiddling around with it and getting frustrated, I decided to look at Flash. Never, ever used it before in my entire life, and I had the thing working in FOUR HOURS, fonts and all.

It's not ready for public consumption, but I'll post it when I'm happy with it. Right now it's too big, and it really needs to be scaled a little bit.

I'm not looking for Google hits or anything, I just wanted to do what I wanted to do without compromising the way I felt it needed to look based on opinions about Flash. Look, the sh*t works, and does what I want it to do, and it looks and behaves EXACTLY the way I want it to. Could it be done in CSS/XHTML? Yes, but with a lot more work if you wanted to tweak it. Also, I had an issue with having to update two images based on doing a rollover. Javascript could handle it, but not all browsers handled it properly, and the IE6/PNG issue kept getting in the way.

Mike

[wataru]

Originally posted by starman:
So, the only way to do it would be to rasterize the text. The problem with THAT is I want to display it over a background of marble. Sure, I could use a PNG, but IE6 on Windows doesn't handle it properly, so the only OTHER way to do it would be to rasterize the text over the background. That works, but if you shift things around on the navigation page, EVERYTHING needs to be redone.

Did you try IE7?

[Turias]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
Keyword: Inconsistency

There's millions of different flash layout and majority of them are very unpredictable. Most of the time you just don't know what will happen if you click the buttons. I want to enjoy surfing the web, not figuring out what I'm supposed to do.

I don't mind Flash if it was used for entertainment purpose (like Homestarrunner, games, etc), but for "real" websites? Absolutely not. You can only find one or two "real" Flash websites that are somehow usable. Even they can be entirely done in XHTML/CSS with little or no problem.

Maybe I'm jealous, biased or not up-to-date person but I just don't see the benefits of going Flash instead of XHTML/CSS.

Exactly.

[starman]

Originally posted by Turias:
Exactly.

Why? Anyone could make a bad CSS page that's just as inconsistent.

Mike

[Turias]

Originally posted by starman:
Why? Anyone could make a bad CSS page that's just as inconsistent.

Mike

Well, show me a technology and I can show you someone who uses it poorly. Your example isn't an excuse. Flash is great for content that requires heavy animation. It was never really meant for anything else, and has a number of large drawback for displaying non-animation content.

1) You can not link to certain pages. If you want to go to a certain part of a site, you are forced to click your way inside.
2) No copy/paste
3) Really bad at internationalization.
4) Really bad at promoting accessibility.

[york28]

Originally posted by MOTHERWELL:
TokyoPlastic

If you view that and still hate Flash you have some issues.

Tha site looks nice, but I had to click three or four times to get to the actual site, and had to wait almost a full minute to get there as well because of all the animation.

Very cool looking, yes, but functionality-wise, it sucks.

[starman]

Originally posted by Turias:
Well, show me a technology and I can show you someone who uses it poorly. Your example isn't an excuse. Flash is great for content that requires heavy animation. It was never really meant for anything else, and has a number of large drawback for displaying non-animation content.

1) You can not link to certain pages. If you want to go to a certain part of a site, you are forced to click your way inside.
2) No copy/paste
3) Really bad at internationalization.
4) Really bad at promoting accessibility.

Those points are valid for pure-Flash sites. I wouldn't even want to do that; I just want a navigation system that's easy to maintain at the top of my site. The rest of the site's in CSS.

Mike

[Turias]

Originally posted by starman:
Those points are valid for pure-Flash sites. I wouldn't even want to do that; I just want a navigation system that's easy to maintain at the top of my site. The rest of the site's in CSS.

Mike

But even a Flash-based navigation system applies to points 3 and 4 above, and those are arguably the biggest points against flash. Also, Google may have a hard time indexing your site if the navigation system doesn't use classic HTML links.

[Oisín]

Originally posted by starman:
As someone brought up, Flash has font management. One thing I despise about the web is that you're confined to a limited number of common fonts. Well, for my site I wanted to use Futura. The problem is, not everyone has it, so I'd have to use Trebuchet . Why should I, the designer, be limited in what I want to present?

You could comprimise by using Century Gothic - I don't know how it is with Macs, but most Windows users have Century Gothic installed, and it's a lot closer to Futura than Trebuchet!

[starman]

Originally posted by Ois�n:
You could comprimise by using Century Gothic - I don't know how it is with Macs, but most Windows users have Century Gothic installed, and it's a lot closer to Futura than Trebuchet!

But it's still a compromise.

How about this: what if I said I wanted to use Microgamma? There's NO equivalent on either platform for that font. My point being, why should I have to compromise?

Mike

[Millennium]

My view is that if something really needs Flash (the Homestar Runner cartoons being an example of this) then it should be done in Flash. On the other hand, if it can be done in HTML then it should be done in HTML.

It's all about using the right tool for the job (Jorb? Jaerb?) The Homestar Runner cartoons use Flash for exactly what it's meant for: animated graphic presentations. In the past they severely abused Flash by doing the rest of the site in it; they've since improved this with a minimal HTML interface, but it really ought to be possible to get to every single cartoon on the site without ever using Flash. This is something which could be complementary to the main interface, rather than replacing it.

[starman]

Originally posted by Turias:
But even a Flash-based navigation system applies to points 3 and 4 above, and those are arguably the biggest points against flash. Also, Google may have a hard time indexing your site if the navigation system doesn't use classic HTML links.

IF.

Exactly. I could put the HTML links in small print at the bottom of the page, and Google will still find it. Google's stupid - it doesn't know that the Flash animation IS the navigation system.

Also, Flash creates HTML that has the text from the animation in the HTML's comments, so depending on how a search engine works, it could still find the site based on the text.

Mike

[Turias]

Originally posted by starman:
IF.

Exactly. I could put the HTML links in small print at the bottom of the page, and Google will still find it. Google's stupid - it doesn't know that the Flash animation IS the navigation system.

Also, Flash creates HTML that has the text from the animation in the HTML's comments, so depending on how a search engine works, it could still find the site based on the text.

Mike

That's exactly what I was saying. "These are some of the the potential problems with Flash-based navigation." There is almost always some hack way to get past some of the problems...

And I'm not sure where you got the info on Flash placing text comments into the source of the page. I just checked out three large corporate sites that use a lot of flash and none of their source contained comments concerning the flash content.

[starman]

Originally posted by Turias:
That's exactly what I was saying. "These are some of the the potential problems with Flash-based navigation." There is almost always some hack way to get past some of the problems...

And I'm not sure where you got the info on Flash placing text comments into the source of the page. I just checked out three large corporate sites that use a lot of flash and none of their source contained comments concerning the flash content.

From my own site

You think I make this stuff up? Just because someone decided to remove it doesn't mean that Flash's Publish command doesn't actually make it.

Code:
<!-- URL's used in the movie-->
<!-- http://istarman.textamerica.com-->
<!-- text used in the movie-->
<!-- Last update: 25 June 2004 Moblog Pictures taken with my Nokia 3650.Pictures are 640x480.Digital Artwork Wallpapers Icons Radio Station-->

And putting HTML at the bottom of the page isn't a "hack".

Mike

[Turias]

Originally posted by starman:
From my own site

You think I make this stuff up? Just because someone decided to remove it doesn't mean that Flash's Publish command doesn't actually make it.

Never said you made it up. Just asked where you got the info. No need for the childish smilie...

Originally posted by starman:
And putting HTML at the bottom of the page isn't a "hack".

Anything used to specifically overcome the shortfalling of another technology is a "hack", in a sense.

And I still claim that the largest problems with Flash are internationalization and accessibility.

[Synotic]

Originally posted by starman:
Ok, here's why I ask. There's something I wanted to do for my web site which was completely possible in CSS, but horribly impractical from a management point of view.

As someone brought up, Flash has font management. One thing I despise about the web is that you're confined to a limited number of common fonts. Well, for my site I wanted to use Futura. The problem is, not everyone has it, so I'd have to use Trebuchet . Why should I, the designer, be limited in what I want to present?

So, the only way to do it would be to rasterize the text. The problem with THAT is I want to display it over a background of marble. Sure, I could use a PNG, but IE6 on Windows doesn't handle it properly, so the only OTHER way to do it would be to rasterize the text over the background. That works, but if you shift things around on the navigation page, EVERYTHING needs to be redone.

After fiddling around with it and getting frustrated, I decided to look at Flash. Never, ever used it before in my entire life, and I had the thing working in FOUR HOURS, fonts and all.

It's not ready for public consumption, but I'll post it when I'm happy with it. Right now it's too big, and it really needs to be scaled a little bit.

I'm not looking for Google hits or anything, I just wanted to do what I wanted to do without compromising the way I felt it needed to look based on opinions about Flash. Look, the sh*t works, and does what I want it to do, and it looks and behaves EXACTLY the way I want it to. Could it be done in CSS/XHTML? Yes, but with a lot more work if you wanted to tweak it. Also, I had an issue with having to update two images based on doing a rollover. Javascript could handle it, but not all browsers handled it properly, and the IE6/PNG issue kept getting in the way.

Mike

You already mentioned that you're just using it for navigation, which I'm usually fine with, although in excess it can be annoying. But to address some of your points... A site should adapt to its purpose, if the purpose is to present your design exactly as you want it, then Flash can aide you in that presentation, layoutwise, disregarding varying resolution/colors. If you want to present content or a service that's accessible, then Flash fails for that purpose. Also, in your particular case, depending on your audience, do you have a fallback in case your visitor doesn't have Flash? Unless you have a one-page site, then the navigation is a vital part of your site, if the main page loads fine and your navigation fails to load (for any variety of reasons) then your site is useless beyond wherever your current visitor is.

You mention the problem of wanting to use your own font on a non-solid background... although I'd personally stick with text for the navigation, we'll use your example of wanting to use a custom font. In that case, you would indeed have to constantly update your main image map, or add another image, depending on how your navigation is set up. But how is that any harder than having to modify the entire Flash file, if you want any changes? By embedding the content into the presentation (we've all heard this before) you're making it harder on yourself by making it hard to update. The beauty of an XHTML/CSS combination is the ability to change the entire design, throughout the entire site through the change of any one line in one stylesheet.

Either way, depending on what type of site you're designing, and what purpose it serves, using Flash in that instance may have been the right decision. But realize that you shouldn't let the technical obstacles stifle your design. Having too free a palette can lead to something worse than if your creativity was challenged within constraints. The example to comes to mind is Douglas Bowman's StopDesign of Wired.com and Blogger.com fame. Although he does use images for text (limitedly), through the constraints of HTML and CSS and browser discrepancies, he's able to create a beautiful page that makes Georgia and Verdana look beautiful. And readable. His is site is one of the few sites that actually makes me want to read the text because of how easy it is (a combination of color, leading, white-space etc...). I won't outline everything, but you can see a similar trend in Blogger.com. A beautiful site that serves its purpose quite well.

Anyways, you probably realize most of this, but I figured someone else might find some of it of use. That and it seems like I've written too much

[Sherwin]

I hate Flash. If the punters see to much of it, they start to expect it and any site which doesn't use it starts to look old. So you have to learn Flash or give good money away to people who can do it already. Then... Once every web site has Flash, something else comes along... Before you know it, you need a Master's in programming just to show people pictures of your cat.

So, to sum up: Flash - unfair to small business.

[starman]

Bah. Stopdesign.com looks like every other site on cssvault.com. The problem is that people have run out of original ideas, probably due to the fact that if they used anything other than CSS they'd be laughed at. I'm not saying that CSS is bad, I use it for my site, but it seems like everyone's already saturated the web with the same CSS-looking sites.

Mike

[starman]

I think my problem with web sites nowadays is that nothing's new anymore. Nothing innovative, nothing revolutionary. CSS is a good step forward, but it's still not enough.

Mike

[philzilla]

Originally posted by Millennium:
It's all about using the right tool for the job (Jorb? Jaerb?)

hahahaha

[Turias]

Originally posted by starman:
I think my problem with web sites nowadays is that nothing's new anymore. Nothing innovative, nothing revolutionary. CSS is a good step forward, but it's still not enough.

Mike

I find it hard to make a site "revolutionary" and yet still be compliant with IE 5.5 and 6.

Stupid IE.

[starman]

Originally posted by Turias:
I find it hard to make a site "revolutionary" and yet still be compliant with IE 5.5 and 6.

Stupid IE.

'tis true.

Mike

[xMetal]

much of flash is simply eye candy. Often very nice eye candy, and fun to see.

I'm currently working on a site/app that uses Flash and pushes it the edge of it's capabilities, in a way that really hasn't been done before AFAIK. Combining flash drawing functions, XML, .Net and more to create a very rich environment for medical training. Flash is very rich in features, and with several thousand lines of scripting you can do some pretty fancy things with it. Far beyond animating things around, to real apps.

I think you'll see Flash transition away from the "bling" to actual application development on teh web. Flash has some awesome capabilities if you delve into it and push. It also has cross-platform/web/cd delivery which is a definite plus for many.

It's all in how you use the tools.