I’m probably going to get flamed over this, but what the hell. Here I present in no particular order my top 10 ways to spot a Flash designer. (Disclaimer: Hey, I started with flash too. It’s just, some of us decide to grow up eventually.)
- Thinks tiny unreadable text is a bonus. Stares at you blankly when you bring up topics like screen readers, or “google.” Also designs using fonts that you’ve never heard of. Not that they were readable in the first place. Every site uses Porcelain for the body text.
- Resizes your window automatically “for the best possible experience.” GOD I HATE THIS ONE.
- Begins design process by selecting a library of sound clips to be played while mousing over the “exploding fireworks” navigation.
- The webpage feels like it’s being viewed through a porthole on a ship. Nike+ anybody?
- After 5 minutes on the site, you still haven’t made it past the intro.
- Cringes at the thought of having to “update” a client’s website because they simply don’t have time to wade through all those layers, re-render, and re-upload that damn .swf.
- Doesn’t know what SEO, Pagerank, or “page views” are.
- Thinks using the “back” and “forward” browser buttons are “overrated.” So is “find on page.”
- While the rest of us struggle over IE’s disregard for :hover, they struggle over the fact that Flash is blocked completely thanks to that “buzzing mosquito banner.”
- After staring at a bare landing page for 30 seconds, you realize you never even saw the site because it launched in a pop-up, which was thankfully blocked by your browser.
Did I miss anything? Leave a comment.
Bravo. Had I been drinking milk, it would have shot out my nose!
Thanks, man. I had this thing sitting in my drafts for a little bit, but finally got it out. It’s ironic considering I just got hired for a job that may involve a bit of flash work. Here’s to hoping they don’t read my blog, haha.
> Here’s to hoping they don’t read my blog, haha.
Hrm, actually it might not be so bad if they did. You’ve picked the top reasons people avoid flash based designs entirely. ;)
And yes, the ‘resize my browser’ crap went out with Frontpage and the Ark.
Are you ridiculing bad design or Flash? If you are ridiculing Flash, it is out of place, I must say. Different technologies are used for different purposes, and each can be misused by a bad designer.
Great list! It frustrates me endlessly when people approach a problem with flash when it would be much more logical to make the site *usable*.
@inkscar
I fear you missed the the headline altogether. I’m poking fun at designERS who abuse the technology. I’m the first to admit that Flash has great potential. It can embed rich media, enable connectivity, and much more. It’s just that flash seems to the whipping boy of bad designers around the world.
I choose accessibility and *not needing a plugin to run*design when at all possible.
Old mind state. Everything you mentioned is not a Flash issue, it’s a design issue. I’m so tired of people blaming Flash for a designers poor decisions. Plus the majority of the design issues you mention are things that were popular (and unpopular) 3-4 years ago. It’s very rare that I see a Flash site these days that exhibit the problems discussed in 1-5 or 10. Updating a Flash site these days is no harder than updating an HTML site. Does it take a bit more planing ahead of time? Sure it does, but if you’re not planning out your site beforehand, no matter what technology you’re using, you’re in for trouble. Can you optimize your Flash site for SEO, absolutely. Can you set it up to track clicks, page views, any stat…absolutely. This conversation is tired.
Oh, Flash.
I certainly agree that it is generally A Bad Idea to use Flash as a replacement for webpages.
I also think, however, that life would get really interesting if a lot of smart people started seriously using the SWF platform for web applications. In the hands of smart people, I think that SWF can provide a better and more efficient experience than an equivalent heavy-AJAX app with less developer effort. (Particularly AJAX apps that are so JS heavy that they throw out a lot of the niceties that browsers normally give you for free, like right click and middle click window opening semantics.)
“10 ways to spot a flash designer”. Not a bad designer. I did not miss your title at all. Or, is my English so bad that I am missing something else in the title?
I mis-read the title and thought you were placing more of the blame towards Flash and not the designer so I’d like to withdraw that earlier portion of my comment. As far as the rest of my previous comment it all stands.
Flash has it’s uses, like as a header on a site. That’s it. Seriously.
>Can you set it up to track clicks, page views, any stat…absolutely.
It can be done, but I have never seen it implemented, only talked about in defense of flash.
@fraction - I appreciate you going back and revisiting the post. Nobody here is saying that Flash is by any means a crippled technology UNABLE of greatness, its just that those features are typically left out by stubborn/inexperienced flash designers
@inkscar - man, someone really put a bee in your bonnet, didn’t they? I was real confused, up until I found your tumblr site through a trackback. Which led me to your portfolio. Which is real good, I have to say. Except that it exemplies at least 5 of the above problems the rest of us seem to have with Flash “abuse.” Seriously dude, nobody is attacking your medium, we just don’t want our windows resized, and we don’t want to have to wait for our text to load while on broadband connections. I’m in awe of your animation skills, and love your vector work. But even you have to admit that there are many situations in which an all flash site simply isn’t called for. Let’s call a spade a spade.
Thanks for the linking and compliments, Eli. Not my medium - only one of many, and as you now note, it has its use in some cases and in others not, but this does not make the medium guilty for the misuse by people use it wrongly, including myself (but why I do in the case of ink is a whole different story and has its reasons). Oh, and I’m a dudette, if anything.
@inkscar
Totally didn’t pick up on the fact that you are a girl. Probably should have scoped out the about page, haha. Not that it changes my argument in the least bit!!
Still, kudos on your work. Thanks for the input. Obviously, “abuse” is subjective.
[...] 46 days (give or take), I have re-surfaced. Some of you may have wondered if I was rubbed out by an angry gang of Flash ninjas, and despite the persistent rumors, that is simply not the case. While I managed to irk some fellow [...]
You must mean bad flash designers, just like there are bad html web designers just check out Web pages that suck.com.