Forum Moderators: buckworks
I wanted to to buy a product that costs approximately $2000. It is a unique brand named item, only available at brick and mortar stores, and all I wanted was the address of my nearest stockist. But all I got at the company website was a notice telling me to download Flash. To get stockist information!
I don't (by choice) have Flash installed with Firefox, which is my routine browser. If I need to look at kool stuff, I open IE.
This is just the latest time that has happened. Increasingly I am looking to buy something - decision made, all I want to do is add it to a basket, pay and go - and I am faced with this notice or else just a blank page. Mostly there is a choice - just go somewhere else - but on this occasion the only place to get the info I needed was on this site.
Am I so unusual in not routinely browsing with Flash enabled/instaled? What is with the increase in gratuitous Flash on business/commerce sites? Or is it increasing or just a perception due to my happening to come accross several in a short time?
I know it is just poor implementation, no alternative provided, in these cases, but can anyone justify, even now when according to most stats, most users have Flash, it's use on sites whose main purpose is to sell?
[edited by: minnapple at 12:17 am (utc) on Nov. 15, 2006]
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I'm constantly shaking my head at the dumb things I see on corporate websites. Huge pictures of execs. Silly mission statements. Flash. The list goes on and on.
OTOH small ecommerce sites quickly learn to get to the point: Grab the customer and sell him something!
It is getting better I think.
That right on the point! Not much more needs to be said than that.
Because of overzealous designers who somehow convince Non-Internet savy decision makers that Flash is cool-and-the-greatest-thing-in-the-world-and-everyone-else-is-doing-it-so-we-have-to-do-it-too-
and-we-have-to-do-it-"better"-than-everyone-else's.
In my experience it is usually the other way round. You tell the customer that flash is not appropiate for his business - but no. The competition does have this flash website with all those fancy effects so they want something similar. They pay a lot of money for your expertise and then won't listen to you.
Those customers immune to any advice are the reason why now I only work on my own projects.
[edited by: minnapple at 12:16 am (utc) on Nov. 15, 2006]
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When I see the jigsaw symbol I just take my money elsewhere.
Flash detect scripts work well. I use php and Flash together, if the user doesn't have flash, the php loads static images. I wish I was allowed to post links, but Flash can enchance a website as a marketing tool, I am talking dynamic front page ads.
In this case there was no detect script and all I wanted was little piece of text information. That is all too common.
Flash can do a lot of wonderful useful things when you know where and how to use it. Attacking Flash blindly is no better than adding it all over the place.
In my view attacking Flash is like saying using Arial on a Web site is stupid. The critic needs to step back a little and realize that some of their attacks are ludicrous and not focused on the real problem.
Flash is just a tool. It's what you do with it that matters.
And yes, surfing with Flash is atypical. It's like surfing without being able to see images, at this point.
I stay pretty up to date with flash and now adobe (Macromedia) created some new code called FLEX which is a combination of flash and XML but it has many other uses.
Best example is the drap and drop shopping cart.
But hey thats just me, I like the code, its cool. It comes down to how designed it and how well they did it in my opinion.
People keep blaming Flash for everything instead of blaming bad designers.
That is true. A lot of the bad rep that flash has gotten is because it was poorly used. Almost every week I see a website where you are forced to suffer through a flash intro with no options to kill it or bypass it. That is just poor design.
I think the "inappropriate flash" is the key. We have two major websites - one is strictly for ecommerce, the other is the companion site that we use for extensive detailed info on various products and systems.
We *never* use any flash on the ecommerce site. And we try to keep anything else that might slow things down to a minimum also.
But on our other site, we are starting to use some flash (very sparingly) for little "how-to" snippets. They are totally optional, we don't force them.
But as for the original post - I totally agree. A while back I bought some fancy coffee grinder. I needed to find out where to get a replacement lid. I go to their site, and am FORCED to download some stupid codec just to get to the menu to see the list of vendors for a $5 item. I wrote a not very nice email to them. Yes, it was bad design - but why has the company let it go for so long?
And I don't really think this junk is developer driven - I know for sure that one of our suppliers specifically asked for it on their recent site upgrade (which was taken off after about 3 weeks due to numerous complaints). How it is implemented though is the developer - in this case, you were forced to see this 30 second flash even if you just used the back button, that could easily have been done correctly.
[edited by: Wlauzon at 10:19 am (utc) on Nov. 14, 2006]
