This entry is in the process of being rewritten, thanks for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience.
Right on brother! Another problem with no URIs: You can't bookmark specific pages.
That's actually not so bad since you will probably never find a specific page due to the search engine and navigation issues.
Why I hate "I hate flash" diatribes:
1) One of the basic arguments is that people prefer text over images/sound/etc. This is evident by the number of newspaper subscriptions going up, and the complete failure that was YouTube. Flash ninnies should realize that and use more text
2) No one of taste uses flash. That is why blogs, news channels, etc. never use the FLV video format. The On2 codec made massively available in Flash MX and 8 was a total waste of money at free . It is also inconceivable that one day people will want to INTERACT with the FLV's by using scrolling menus and buttons
3) loading screens are never tastefully done, or entertaining. Besides we have a culture that is ADD and we should be proud of it. If it isn't there in 2 seconds, I'm ... oh look a shiney
4) Google is our new overlords and Flash people don't get that. 100% of web marketing is SEO and flash is difficult to build SEO for (it wasn't there in flash 5!!!). Heaven forbid that one build the SEO around the Flash
5) Flash sites always forget the handicapped. While using sound/video/multimedia to immerse the user, blind people always like large amounts of text read off to them
6) Just because 98% of the users of the internet have some version of the Flash player installed doesn't mean they actually ever used a site that had Flash on it. Obviously it was forced on them by the giant failure "YouTube".
Just think, if Youtube went completely flash based, they would have fonts and colors, a full immersive experience for the user, instead of all those wonderful standard fonts, and scrolling bars. It's like when they added the "other similar videos" after you watch one so you can click on related ones within the flash player... oh my goodness, can you think someone would use that instead of going back to white with text numbers. Obviously the web is text based and should always be. Flash developers should go out and get a real job.
Great post, I agree with it wholeheartedly.
A long rant, with which I agree a great deal, from someone that uses light gray text and dark blue links on a black background. :( I had to enlarge to 190% to be able to read some of them. But, on the other hand, since it's not Flash, at least I could.
I assume this site looks good to you, what I can't understand is why.
I can only say: "hear, hear!" Flash sucks a big floppy donkey dick.
lose google cache not loose, maybe they didnt want you because you can't spell
Readability issue with light fonts on dark background are imaginary, but I agree that small links might be too dark for some screens..
http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/survr...
Thanks for the correction, please refer to my about section to know why my spelling sucks.
You forgot to lambaste them for putting a FULL SCREEN feature on the page. WTF were these guys thinking?
I would agree that flash should not be used for to develop entire websites, it just breaks too much of the accepted functionality of the web.
However I will concede that it is a great platform for embedded interactive content/applications on websites.
It is another tool in your toolbox, that can be used to great effect, however don't use it to break the interaction assumptions on the web.
Exploratory Ramble
I think that this comes down the to "Human computer Interaction" vs. "The Designers". HCI peoples purpose is to better facilitate your interaction with the content, the designers on the other hand want to create an "experience", where pixels matter and you must travel through their reality as they want it to be with no deviation. While this is fine for print and the video medium, the more the human has to interact with the content I think you have to lean more and more towards the hci view, and with the web this means surrendering some of the control of presentation, gracefully.
Maybe I should have made this the artist vs interactive designer or something, I know that this stereotyping is wrong and not a good reflection of what is out there in the world, but I do think the point of drawing this distinction is valid.
Maybe I am trying to draw this distinction from their typical toolbox, since designers are the masters of using color, composition, typography to guide the user. Though this is almost all of game in traditional mediums, it is only a (small/medium?) part of the game in the digital age (but very core and essential). To be great at HCI I think you have to have all the knowledge of a great designer but have to also be able to further tackle this murky world of HCI.
While great designers probably instinctively learn the new interaction modes of their new medium, I am not sure the merely good ones do.
Maybe the fact that this class of designers really understand their audience, and the way we interact with the medium makes them great designers?
Anyway enough of the incoherent ramble...
Hate to break it to you, but most of those complaints don't apply to Flash. Flash isn't HTML, its not supposed to be, its supposed to complement HTML. One is almost always better suited to some task than the other, but plenty of poor web developers see them as alternatives to each other.
Face it, Flash is here to stay. It's gaining popularity, not losing it, and you're all being silly for missing the point.
readability issues with light fonts on a dark background are imaginary? can you hand wave a little more, please? typography is a very old and very well studied field; you should at least know enough to increase your letter spacing on a dark background if you want this post to be taken seriously from a design standpoint.
and very good job lumping every single use of flash and developers who use flash into a single deragatory post. this wasn't inflammatory at all.
Misguiding title. You are talking about why you hate that particular flash website, not Flash.
To all of the people going "this post is crap": please provide a name. Being anonymous is cowardly.
To the OP: excellent summary of the reasons I hate Flash, as well. No matter how immersive some websites can be, accessibility and SEO are both higher priority than making it look a bit pretty. At the very least, providing a non-Flash version of the website would be a good alternative. You can have the Flash one for you people who like visual noise, and for people like myself that just want to get to the damn content, I'd like a non-Flash version.
Speaking of good web design, would you mind terribly altering the CSS of your website to bring the block quote font size to a human readable level? Please and thank you :)
The site is all flash and no website!
preach it brother! ps I think this error is due to translating literally from French (or Quebecois): "...I found a quote from a web design expert that resumes the situation better..." instead of 'resumes' it should be 'summarizes'
In regard to previous comments, I think many people here are missing the point. While the title of the post might indicate it's about flash use in general, the subject is flash use as a replacement for standard web design. Flash has many good uses, such as video players, games, etc. I personally have no problem with flash used in this way. However, all the points made in this post are solid, explaining why using flash in this instance was a poor design decision. If you'd like to refute any of the points made, please do. Posting "you suck, flash is great" while missing the point of the point isn't contributing much.
I disagree. I've just been trying their site out now and it's rather nice. Looks good and is fairly easy to navigate, and captivates my interest.
@Nick: Thanks for the advice, it's done ;)
@Babak: Exactly pal, lol
@Brian: Thanks, you really got my point !
@Anonymous: Some people like it .. I guess. Thanks for your comment.
Please god, someone end the misery of flash video; Why is it I can use quicktime to play a full screen video with under ten percent CPU usage, whereas youtube takes 40%... on BOTH CORES!
That site, takes a solid eighty percent.
Now, partially it's the suckage that is flash on the mac. But god I hate flash.
White text on a black background? You have no credibility.
flashblock is my favorite extension for firefox. Flash sould be the icing on the cake, the cool 3d view, the video, a game, or the interactive map. It should never be the whole site, it's just plain inefficient, when html, or a script that serves html would do just fine.
These guys use flash to redirect the user to the right page! Which means you'll never see their main site if you don't have flash
another bad example is http://withfullforce.de First it changes your window size fitting its intro - and then it pumps it up to maximal size for the rest of the page - and this altough it would handle it gracefully.
Went last year to this festival and couldn't stand their damin page.
So you hate Flash because there are a lot of bad Flash developers, and a lot of bad Flash content? You must REALLY hate HTML then.
I can't believe I got to the bottom of this whole thing and didn't see <a href="http://useit.com">this link to UseIt.com</a>. There are guidelines for hi-usability Flash implementation. Best-ever all Flash site: http://homestarrunner.com -- For more tips on usability, follow <a href="http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html">Strong Bad's advice</a>.
First of all shouldn't you be able to post a comment at the bottom of the page after you have presumably read all the other comments and want to add something . . . I searched the post a comment link for about 10 min until I found it
But now getting back to the subject . . . I mostly agree with you when you say that the site is poorly designed and the designer paid no attention to lots of detail that make a site search engine friendly and also the overall accessibility of the site but you can't discard flash altogether it is a big part of the internet and if it is used properly it can bring a whole new face to a website. Search the web for all great design firms and you will surely find in each team at least one flash designer
"If you don't have Flash, too bad for you pal."
Who doesn't have Flash these days? Only those who deliberately choose not to use it, it seems.
Someone sounds a tad bitter, even if it was merely the straw that broke the camels back.
Jeremy I can't be more agreed, every time I visit a Flash site I lose my temper, loooooooooong sloooow loading and high CPU usage and inconvenience, and most of the times the site won't load properly, And heck yes the internet connection quality matters but if I am a businessman who digs money I want to make sure that my site suits the majority not the minority and flash definitely won't be my choice.. Flash is an eye candy for menus and interfaces in softwares and presentations but for websites Adobe better find another employee. I heard that MS is working on the so called: SilverLight which meant to overcome Flash shortcomings... well.. I am not MS fanboy either.. but we will wait and see.
There is one thing I would like to add, which is crashes.
Flash still makes my firefox crumble to dust every now and then (not to forget the CPU load) AND especially often it is advertisement.
I know of brilliant examples with flash but flash is as annoying as difficult captchas
permalink Anonymous ~ April 15, 2008 at 3:04 p.m.