ICANN
André has links and the results of the ICANN elections.
Flash
Der Schockwellenreiter links to Skip Intro – An aesthetic and economic analysis of Macromedia’s Flash technology.
“Once abandoned as a useless, time-costly feature of a website that turned out to scare off visitors rather than invite them, the intro page is now popular with corporate websites as well as design-orientated webzines and portfolios.
You can, of course, usually skip Flash intros. But doesn’t that make them the equivalent of pop-up widows – annoying extraneous things that you want to get rid of as soon as they appear?”
don’t know if this is enough math for you, more physics …
god particle discovered.
an interesting read, nonetheless.
Thanks, Garret! The article explains things very well.
I’ve heard about the possible discovery a week or two ago. A friend from university writes her thesis in physics and works in a group of physicists that do experiments at CERN, and she always has the latest news from there.
It seems that most physicists still don’t know what to make of the experiments – some claim that they have almost certainly discovered the Higgs particle, others say that it could be a just an error in the measurements…
much of this article generalizes and denigrates common web themes … long downloads, gratuitous intros, animated banner ads, etc. these were problems long before flash ever hit the market, and will be for the foreseeable future. they are not tied to any one technology. good lord, i still hit the occasional site with an animated gif intro page (with no ‘skip intro’ command!) that takes five minutes to download.
the best part of this piece is pointing up the fact that programmers who use flash need to be better informed about ui and information architecture issues. using a proprietary plug-in technology for such things as e-commerce is a bit insane, especially if you want a large audience. the fact that you can create interfaces that do not adhere to the existing ‘web usability standards’ does not make flash any less valid as a tool. there are cars that go faster than the speed limit; doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them.
the ‘conclusion’ is very shortsighted:
because flash ignores the principal structure of the internet and its content. and because flash ignores usability standards that interface designers, information architects and programmers have established in the past, to provide [novice] users good usability standards throughout the web. flash sites render useless the browser’s back button and address bar, and make bookmarking pages inside a flash site impossible.
this is virtually word for word what folks said about the FRAME tag when it was introduced in netscape 2.0. where is the FRAME tag now? a part of the HTML 4.0 spec.
given that example, where will flash and scalable vector graphics be, in a year or two? don’t take my word for it … go check over at w3c.
a better conclusion, via an old american nursery rhyme: ‘there was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. when she was good, she was very, very good. and when she was bad, she was horrid.’
now THAT’s flash.
(grin)
much of this article generalizes and denigrates common web themes … long downloads, gratuitous intros, animated banner ads, etc. these were problems long before flash ever hit the market, and will be for the foreseeable future. they are not tied to any one technology. good lord, i still hit the occasional site with an animated gif intro page (with no ‘skip intro’ command!) that takes five minutes to download.
You’re right. However, my feeling is that while these problems exist, there’s no need to increase them by using Flash.
Too often, Flash is used for those damn intro pages, and I’ve never seen a useful “entry tunnel” so far. Of course, doing an animated gif intro is not better either.
this is virtually word for word what folks said about the FRAME tag when it was introduced in netscape 2.0. where is the FRAME tag now? a part of the HTML 4.0 spec.
And still, I often encounter sites with frames that are not working properly.
I think the problem with both frames and Flash – and many other things – is that they can cause problems when not used properly. That goes for frames (if the back button doesn’t work or pages get opened in the wrong frame etc.) and for Flash, and somehow it seems that there are not (yet?!) many useful Flash sites. A great exception is ABC News 4 Kids, to which Mike Donellan pointed a while ago. It’s even interesting for grownups and easy to use. (Although a back button would be useful…)
a better conclusion, via an old american nursery rhyme: ‘there was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. when she was good, she was very, very good. and when she was bad, she was horrid.’
now THAT’s flash.
(grin)
He he.