Flash is not sexy or so they say
May 1st, 2008
Catchy title, hot topic, one main goal. Delivering content to our audiences in the most logical, and accessible manner possible. When you break it down, Flash, and Web Developers alike are both, or should I say, should both be in the business of designing pages and applications for the end user is the easiest fashion.
Who are these users anyway?
Well, they are you and I, our parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, etc…But what the heck does that mean to us? They are just titles we give to people in our lives. No. They need to be segregated into more usable categories, ie; age, sex, location, you know, all those demographics. When designing an interface we need to be concerned with these traits as well as the marketing end of things. Obliviously if something is not visually appealing, you will probably not enjoy yourself, and or leave. What I think looks good might look completely awful to my dad, or mom. On the same token, what I think is easy to use, might be rendered unusable to others.
Bridging the gap
Ok, so we have figured out who are site is targeting, or at least who we want to target. The next step is to obliviously come up with a comp for how we want it to look and feel. Heck, we might have even got ahead of ourselves and thought about how we want things to function. This can be a dangerous thing, this functionality. Here in lies almost all of our usability, and accessibility issues.
Flash just looks really cool
That is true, when it is done right it can look really good. But remember, looks are only half the battle as we have already gone over. We might have gotten the user in the door, but now they are in for a long standing session if they cannot find a seat fairly quickly. What I am referring to is of course how the site functions. One of the biggest problems I think with Flash sites is that usually you are greeted with some type of elaborate or overly animated introduction, which can leave the user confused and thinking:
Is this a movie? What is going on here? How do I get it to stop? What was I looking for again?
We have all been there. There is a fine line between presenting information in a clever manner, and completely losing your audience.
Don’t send Flash to do a man’s job.
To me there is nothing worse than going to a site constructed almost entirely in Flash that at first glance you are like, “wait is this just straight HTML & CSS?”, nope they tricked you. I truly do not understand this one at all. If you want something to behave like HTML & CSS, why not construct it out of, oh I don’t know…HTML & CSS?
I think the back button is broken
Last year I was working with an older client who was trying to show me something on a project they had outsourced. It was a presentation made with Flash. They were having the hardest time in the world navigating this page. Of course this particular presentation was far from adequate and should never have been paid for, in fact they probably should have laughed at the developer and or burned his home to the ground.
I watched I don’t know how many times, them try to use the browser “back” button to navigate, and I am assuming you can guess the outcome. Even after instruction, they were still suffering, as was I…This is such a small little detail that I think some Flash Developers over look. I mean granted there are plenty of ways around this, but there is also that one time that someone will do it, get enraged and close your site.
That is not to say that there are not plenty of excellent Flash Developed sites out there…
- http://www.tvwonline.net/lab/pressconnect/
- http://www.gotoandlearn.com/
- http://rsizr.com/
- http://thefwa.com/
- http://fontsforflash.com/
- Posted at 11:46 am in development
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