Comments on: News flash: Flash websites still suck

By: Robert Dall

Robert Dall — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:41:54 +0000

Well that is like saying to picture sucks of because of the camera and not the user. It is the developers of flash that suck not the program itself.

In regards to the headline. At least the Rogers one ended up being true! But I am glad to see you started quite the debate on this post. Sometimes it takes a headline like that to get the masses involved, but I even if flash did suck I still didn't like the headline.

By: mathewi

mathewi — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:55:08 +0000

Thanks, Leigh — and it's “old skool” by the way :-)

I totally agree with your statement about Flash — it does rock, when
done brilliantly and for the right reasons. Unfortunately, there's a
whole lot of Flash out there that doesn't fit either part of that
description.

By: mathewi

mathewi — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:52:05 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Robert. I am willing to admit that there are
lots of situations in which Flash makes sense — and that there are
also lots of situations where clients want it and you have to do it.
That doesn't change my central point, however.

As for the headline, there's a fine line between a “sensational”
headline and one that gets your attention — a line that is so fine in
some cases that it's difficult to see at all. I couldn't help but
notice, for example, that you enjoyed the headline on my Rogers iPhone
post, and that one was arguably just as sensational :-)

By: leigh

leigh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:38:36 +0000

Yeah it should all be text based and have no graphics. Yawn…

Oh Mathew. You are so old school. Clearly you've spent too much time cavorting with your engineering and uber geek friends. When done brilliantly and for the right reasons, Flash rocks.

By: 300baud

300baud — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:11:28 +0000

I absolutely disagree. I think when dealing with media files like video, audio and especially photos, Flash only serves to make them more inaccessible, and make working with them more restricted. In fact, that is usually *why* it is used; as a form of poor-mans access control to the media.

The only place I would use Flash (if I were permitted to put my users first) would be for the interactive visualization of large sets of data. And even for this, SVG and JS or server-side code can now do anything Flash does, but openly.

But then, being beautiful does not even make my top ten. I am more concerned with things like interoperability with other software (ESPECIALLY for web sites) and the most efficient and accessible UIs (which are almost always ugly and almost never Flash).