Why do sites use flash?

[dfi]

Ok, I know flash sites can have all this neato music and flashy (no pun intended... or did I?!) animation intros. But when I look at most flash sites, all they really do is use flash for navigation. As far as I can tell navigation on most of these flash sites can be done w/o flash anyways.

One advantage I was reading is that your server doesn't have to reload the page to inform the user of missing fields when filling out forms. But can't you do that with javascript anyways?

Perhaps someone that has/does use flash to create sites can tell me what I'm missing?

dfi

 

[gopunk]

it looks nice, is easier than other options in some cases

 

[Chaotic42]

Ask Vincent Flanders...

Flash has it's place. Like cartoons and demonstrations and such. I *hate* Flash when it's not needed though. I'm old school. Just give me a text-only website and I'll be happy. I just want information.

Edit: Used the word "though" too much.

 

[Trezza]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42


Flash has it's place. Like cartoons and demonstrations and such. I *hate* Flash when it's not needed though. I'm old school though. Just give me a text-only website and I'll be happy. I just want information.

flash can be nice but i don't want to see a flash page at wall street journal.com or other factual or business websites.

 

[dfi]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Ask Vincent Flanders...

Flash has it's place. Like cartoons and demonstrations and such. I *hate* Flash when it's not needed though. I'm old school. Just give me a text-only website and I'll be happy. I just want information.

Edit: Used the word "though" too much.

Ah, forgot about cartoons and demonstrations. Ya, flash is good for that. But I seem to be seeing a lot of flash for the sole purpose of navigation. And man do I hate mystery meat navigation.

Reading the macromedia site, I almost get the impression that they think flash should replace html. Even though their site is largely done in html.

dfi

 

[calpha]

For me....I hate flash-only websites. Hate them. Other then a little dhtml or CSS----and some good looking graphics....I dont' want a lot of sounds, and crap. And Menus can be done in DHTML too...why people do them in flash, other then x-browser issues, still makes me wonder.

But, then again.....the live scoring app (java + flash based) that ESPN has for watching games (Gamecast) is nothing short of awesome.

But the long and the short of it is....there's been rumors more then once that M$ft is thinking about buying Macromedia.....and I personally can see a day where flash replaces javascipt in it's ubiquity. Flash is highly programmable....and if you do go to flash instead of DHTML/JS/CSS you (to my knowledge) can leave the X-Browser problems behind you.

Most surveys say that more then 95% of web users have the flash component installed on their system.

But....for all that good stuff...I still hate it. I want a simple, organized, NON-FRAMES web page, and I'm happy. Take grc.com. To me....other then not having a search option last time i checked....you don't get much easier, and cleaner then that.

 

[FredFredrickson]

Flash is really good for smooth animation, fast loading content, and interactivity...
But can't stand it when people use it for an entire website (especially if a loader page automatically opens up the flash site in a new window), or when people use it just because they think they know how.
My biggest beef: When a site uses flash for navigation, and then you instinctively press the back button in your browser... only to go back like 500 pages, to whatever site you were on before the flash site!

 

[TheOmegaCode]

Why do sites use flash?

To crash Mozilla...

 

[HarryAngel]

Originally posted by: FredFredrickson
Flash is really good for smooth animation, fast loading content, and interactivity...
But can't stand it when people use it for an entire website (especially if a loader page automatically opens up the flash site in a new window), or when people use it just because they think they know how.
My biggest beef: When a site uses flash for navigation, and then you instinctively press the back button in your browser... only to go back like 500 pages, to whatever site you were on before the flash site!

I agree. Some sites look good with flash and there is a purpose with it but most non-commercial sites i've seen flash with are more or less lame (with a rather small number of exceptions imo).

 

[SinfulWeeper]

Originally posted by: TheOmegaCode

Why do sites use flash?

To crash Mozilla...

Strange... I have no problems with Mozilla and Flash... other than hating the sound that a lot of web sites use.

 

[MaxDepth]

I agree about overkill.

I do have 2 questions to pose to Macromedia about Flash.
1) You can translate XML and HTML - the <P> tags and other informational tags - pretty quickly and almost as good as someone speeking the language. Look at google how they do this. The question: If you want multilinqual data, do you have to build each in a specific language?

2)How does a Flash program comply with the US government mandate of Section 508? (508 is the disabilities act)

 

[Modeps]

Flash is cross browser/ cross platform... Having a flash navigation instead of DHTML saves developers a TON of time, if they're writing their own DHTML.

 

[xirtam]

Never heard anyone complain about being flashed before.

 

[Shalmanese]

so sites like www.homestarrunner.com could exist.

 

[rh71]

Originally posted by: Intake77
Flash is cross browser/ cross platform... Having a flash navigation instead of DHTML saves developers a TON of time, if they're writing their own DHTML.

This is a great advantage for Flash; as long as the plugin is there, it'll work the same for all platforms.

I'm a huge proponent of Flash technology. I created my personal site (see sig) over a span of two months, while taking the opportunity to learn what it's capable of. The sites you see today (including mine to a degree) barely begin to exploit it's robustness. And even that is being improved with every release. How many of you know with the release of Flash 6, you can stream a webcam broadcast, with sound, adjustable thru the window? Few corporate sites use Flash because integration with backend databases hasn't been proven... yet. With the introduction of Flash Remoting, this will soon change.

My point is, many of the uses of Flash today may seem trivial, unnecessary, or even annoying, but it's up to the person who creates the site. It's about purpose. The technology expands far greater than 99% of the sites out there. Take a look at OneScreen as a "prototype" example.

Flash allows you to design and code sites like a WYSIWYG editor, while allowing room for animation/text effect creativity (the keyword here). Integration with dynamic languages (jsp/asp/cf/etc.) has been a large part of its backend capability today, but again, Flash Remoting will only improve upon that. There's much more to Flash than animation and sound.

If you don't recall, HTML sites began popping up in the early mid-90s with outrageous background/text colors and blinking text.

 

[n0cmonkey]

As long as the site has an HTML version of their page, I don't mind flash.

 

[MainFramed]

it attracts people, flashy. and very cool

 

[WannaFly]

Personally and usually, if a page has a flash version and an HTML, i'll go html. Simply b/c navagating flash takes way to much time usually, I dont want to wait for the darn animation to get done i know where the button is, I wanna click it!

Also, i hate flash for being able to make flash banners! There on one advertisement on AT a few weeks back that played music and someone said something, annoying as can be!

Flash has its places, but in most it is way to overused and out of control. I think.

 

[Cerb]

1) You can translate XML and HTML - the <P> tags and other informational tags - pretty quickly and almost as good as someone speeking the language. Look at google how they do this. The question: If you want multilinqual data, do you have to build each in a specific language?

2)How does a Flash program comply with the US government mandate of Section 508? (508 is the disabilities act)

1) Yes. There could be ways around it, but IE kills all the cool ones. However, on the sevrer side, it is possible to have a layout and then the content simply put into the page, so you don't have to do each page that way, just the text that is read.
If you mean flash and HTML/XHTML/CSS, then...it depends. They likely do it that way, though.

2) Good question. It may not. However, much of that type of thing is dealt with on the user side, save with stylesheets (which can be on the user end as well).

 

[yoda291]

flash is very useful. It provides a very nice means of streaming data realtime now with the xml parser they threw in. It can also pass data in from and spit it back out to a server side script very easily...plus it adds just one level of code abstraction compared to javascript. On top of that, dHTML/javascript doesn't always run, especially with popup killers that decide that javascript = bad. As far as annoying sounds and annoying animations, it's not flash's fault. I mean, can you honestly say you've never seen html that makes you wanna vomit? I mean, just google "I love my cat" and you'll see some horrible uses of web space. Doesn't mean we get rid of html just because some people have no sense of what annoys the hell outta people.