Forum Moderators: phranque
Now, this fellow use to work for Dell as a tech help rep and thinks he knows a bit about the internet as a result. He asked me what I was looking for and I said, well someone who could do a bit of HTML, CSS, JS and maybe a bit of the more difficult programming but just something basic, as I have a programmer already and I really think Ecomm sites needs to be simple, nothing flying about or complicated.
His reply was, "Oh, you mean the boring stuff. You know, I can do Flash, at least a good intro. That's what you should be doing. Something more interesting."
I told him that a flash intro would kill a site to which he replied no, lots of his web designer friends do them. I walked away at that point. It's no use arguing with that mindset.
I suppose the point on this rambleing is there are those who know how to put a site together so that you can accomplish what needs to be accomplished and there are those that put sites together without a thought to the user simply because it looks cool. Thank goodness that the real players in the internet did away with that garbage long ago.
And he's right. The reason I can't find too many decent web designer is they are more busy trying to do something cool rather than make money. ;)
Some people just don't recognise the benefits of professionalism.
They must be educated, which means you sometimes need to back up your opinions with some hard facts and figures.
little bit of strategically placed Flash
There in lays the problem. I can't find someone who can do a "little bit of flash". Movement can help a page if done right (look at Amazon's gold box) but most who can do Flash think that more is better. Or rather, most think that more of everything is better.
Less is more.
Looping sound has got to be one of the most annoying features of Flash movies.
A Flash page slows your user down. Your user wants one or both of the following:
1) Information
2) To buy or download a product
Every user wants to do this in as few clicks as possible. They want to do what they want to do and they want to do it now.
:)
Sorry, someone had to say it. I was complaining to a friend of mine about such clients recently (he runs a remodling company, so he has plenty of horror stories as well) and he says to me 'The customer is always right'. After I rolled my eyes and groaned I said 'yup, but that doesn't mean they have to be my customer'
Obviously that's an overstatement, I'd always try to work with a client, but sometimes I FEEL like giving them a competitor's business card. Hey, actually that's not a bad idea :) I'll swamp my competitors with bad clients and their portfolio will plummet and I'll be on top of the world--with no clients :(
Bloated flash intros, animated mailboxes, and audio without controls should be on every website! They're soooo sweet!
Yeah ... I tell all of my clients' competitors just that ;)
There is nothing wrong with using a little bit of strategically placed Flash on a web page. Depending on your industry, it can do wonders for first impressions if done tastefully and correctly.
Except that (a) it requires a download and (b) some people actively disable Flash due to annoying Flash ads (and many more will in the future). Flash is great for some things but if you use it for something important like navigation, you're making a mistake.
Since I switch in and out of both languages pretty constantly, I often don't notice that I'm on a French site until I see the style.
I'm not talking about large, high-traffic sites, which seems to have acquired a relatively international monotony (and functionality), but it seems like the break point for flashing marquees is at quite a bit higher traffic level in French.
I don't really know what this means or whether it's even correct. As I say, it's just an impression. But it does lead me to believe that certain audiences are maybe more receptive to blinky things on their pages than others. Or maybe French people just find the web more annoying than do Americans.
Anyway, has anyone else who is bilignual noticed this?
And to say *one* on-topic thing in this post. I used to hate, despise and otherwise detest Flash, but I have seen that people who design Flash with a knowledge of basic web usability in mind are capable of beautiful and amazing pages that are relatively fast as well. The problem is that most Flash designers are still in the blinky marquee phase, meaning what can be done is equated with what ought to be done.
If only Brett had a style code for blinking marquees, this post would look exactly as I wish...
Tom
If I look at web design firms in my local area, they almost all use flash. The ones I've looked at in Mexico use very litte.
I don't know if I'm to old but if there is this big blinking logo on each page it would make me crazy.
I don't know how old you are, but I doubt that's the reason for your dislike of flashing blinking gizmos. I'm 22, and I turn off every blinking .gif and every Flash animation I can! :)
(Don't use them, either, except that I do allow a few VERY MILD animated banners on my site.)
There is a segment of web users that don't consider a site good unless you have the flash and lots of pics. I have seen it argued that some people will leave a site that is all text and no graphics because it does not look professional. I am stuck with a compromise with my site. I was not able to get rid of all the fluff but I was able to get rid of some of it. My boss says that he gets comments all the time on how cool our site looks. Designing for the web is hard because you can design for one group of people and another group will hate it.
Designing for the web is hard because you can design for one group of people and another group will hate it.
That's why its best to identify your target market and make a site for that demographic and not everyone.
It is very difficult to attempt to market to every single population at once. Know who makes you money and forget trying to please the rest of them.
Anyway, has anyone else who is bilignual noticed this?Don't get me started on Japanese website design...it's a wonder I'm not bald yet. Cartoon/Flash is only the beginning of it. There is a lot of that in Japanese, Chinese and Korean sites.
can't find someone who can do a "little bit of flash".
Tale a look at Overture.com - that's one of the best and understated uses of flash to create a great first impression.
Do you think that foreign sites may have more of the flashy, blinky stuff because the markets are not as mature as US/UK? I mean, 5 years ago, didn't we see the same things with big US sites?
A friend of mine bought a book at a library sale on web design that was three or four years old. I told her to ignore what it said. It actually recommended colored backgrounds and text. It used Neiman Marcus' site as an example with brightish orange backgrounds. Neiman Marcus now has a white background and for good reason.
Through experience, countries that have been on the web in greater numbers and for a longer time have figured it out. Maybe the foreign sites will catch up after they figure it out for themselves.
A Westerner might view that as frivolous. But an Easterner would just as soon assume the Western mind is too feeble to handle the input :-).
Yes I am being sarcastic.
I recently lost a valued long time client because
I was stubborn and didn't want to compromise usability
fast load times, cross functionality, and standards
adherence. They went from a 100% w3c CSS and HTML
compliance and 64k total size to a framed site that
the home page is about 400k. Not even a doctype
statement in the head. But it looks nice.
(as long as you have working eyes, ears, and use IE on broadband).
Thanks for reading my Rant.
-Water Mammal
They design for print. Which means: eye-catching intro page, just like the title of a brochure.
Problem is, a website is not a brochure. If someone arrives at a website, they are already interested! They don't need to be "enticed". They want to find the information as quickly as possible.
Not sure where someone pointed this out recently, was it on WWW? It opened my eyes, why so many web site blueprints I get have intro pages.
I haven't found a good way yet to communicate that these are not necessary or even detrimental. I really hate designing those. So much extra work just to force people to do an extra mouseclick.
I know it hurts to lose a client but like an actor choosing roles, you have to be picky about how you are represnted for the long term. Make a bloated site now, and some client a year from know will go with your competitor b/c obviously you're one of the flash designers, and they want something smart.
...sometimes people just think that we are all just 1010101110...
There are 10 types of people in the world: those that understand binary and those that don't.
;)
I used to think they were simply less mature markets, but if you look at TV and print advertising and billboards and so on, what works in one place and to one audience doesn't work with another. That's true across cultural divides in the US as well (compare ads in the New Yorker to ads in the National Enquirer), but more striking when you swithc countries and more stiking still when you swithc languages.
I do think that cultures that have not been so bombarded with advertising for so long are perhaps more tolerant of stright-up, in-your-face blinking-marquee advertising. I suspect it has more to do with that than with the state of the web per se.
I don't know really and don't want to divert the thread too much. But I would say how much Flash you can get away with depends a lot on your target audience, and the linguistic group they belong to may determine how much is too much (or enough).
Tom
