Designers are renewing my love of Flash
Posted Sunday, November 2nd, 2008It was quite some time back that I fell out of love with Flash. I was really pushing for accessibility with the design and build of my sites, and Flash just didn’t quite sit right with me and what I was aiming to achieve, so I near enough dropped it completely from my designs.
There are so many nice lightweight Javascript frameworks now a days, mootools, jquery, scriptaculous to name a few, that allow us to do so many nice effects that once were only possible with Flash. Fading buttons, gallerys, slides and so on can now all be achieved by a much more accessible route.
Now I know Flash has been pushing for accessibility, but it can never really give you the content benefits that a Javascript or plain XHTML/HTML built site can. This only leads to adding noscript tags and making your website code all messy.
One thing Flash can give you is a damn good looking website! But I have to say, this can only been achieved by some extremely talented designers.
I have gathered together a few websites below which I have found and bookmarked over the recent months which really made me go WOW!.
So why not give them a tickle and see what you think! But remember to download Flash Player!
Saizen Media
Original Source
Galaicofolia
Axiom
Ian Wharton
Maria Filo
Eco Zoo
Carona Beach
Oasim
Posted Saturday, Jun 5th, 10
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Hi! Nice blog you have, but I prefer plain XHTML instead of difficult navigation. I think users dont like to spend too much time on a website, they just want what they were looking for. I think that is the beutiful thing on a web site.. the userfriendly navigation and good content. But nice work! specially this blog :) Greetings from Argentina
Eugenia
November 6th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Aye, Flash doesn’t sit right with me either as a web developer.
I’ve never agreed with Flash to be used for entire websites because every time I encounter a Flash-based website, I have to turn my speakers off if it has auto-play music, I search for a “skip intro” link if there’s an unnecessary intro movie. Then I have to contend with looping animations, again-unnecessary animations in between clicking of menu items as the site goes from one page to another…
Flash is my bane on the ‘net!
November 6th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
I like what you have done here? What would you suggest to be the fastest and most effective way to learn CSS html. Should I lock myself in a library for a month? Go back to school? Spend a gazillion hours on internet researching? What do you think?
Thank you,
November 7th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I’ve never enjoyed Flash websites either… I really have a hard time being happy while I have to wait for Flash pages to load, and I often just leave. Narek, there are tons of very good resources online about learning CSS.
http://w3schools.com/css/default.asp is a good tutorial site
http://codex.wordpress.org/CSS talks specifically about using CSS with WordPress if that is your interest. It also points you to some good resources as well.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
First of all, great blog and design. It’s really fresh, fun, and the color scheme is very pleasing.
I can’t say I’ve ever been one for Flash websites either, but I do like the Oasim site. There’s a beauty in its simplicity. Though it is annoying sometimes to wait for the load. As you stated, many similar things can be done without Flash that are more lightweight, which is top priority for web design in my book.
@Narek: Check out online resources, pick up a few books, and tinker. Many people (including me) are self-taught in CSS and I think the best way to learn is just play around with it after learning a few basics.
December 11th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Awesome site. Great post.
But I would like to know how many “Flash-haters” turn on the TV “just to get the information they need? If such a scenario where the case the only viable channel would be CNN.
The web is unanimously being crowned as the future of communication, entertainment, and marketing. While XHTML should be the sole choice for a lot of content on the web, for designers wishing to entertain their web audience, boost their brand image, or communicate their message with the greatest degree of impact, relying solely on Flash makes perfectly logical sense. This is especially true for sites that have more visual and audio content than it does text.
With the pervasiveness of Broadband load times are becoming more of a none issue than it was in times past, and for those looking to be entertained it can be interesting seeing the various creative preloaders. After all, how many of us complain when we have to sit through a couple of minutes of commercials before we can see the rest of our favorite sitcom or drama on television?
December 12th, 2008 at 1:30 am
I spent so much time on flash, when the whole ajax/jQuery demand became much, I discovered it was the way forward. I haven’t touched my Adobe flash software since
December 16th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Axiom and Oasim are the textbook definitions of mystery meat. Retarded.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Nice blog and nice links.
As a flash developer/designer, I tell people there are some projects that flash works and some that don’t . But when it comes to a better user experience (on a sites where users will spent more time), flash is best.
¡ viva la flash!
January 29th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Back in the late 1990′s I used to do entire websites in Flash (pause for laughs). Chief among my complaints was the fact that the “back” button ruined everything. By the time newer versions of Flash had corrected that problem with actionscript methods I had long since used Flash only for banners – a thing to which it is still excels beyond all peers.
In November of 2007 I encountered MooTools and fell in love, though I have recently transitioned to JQuery. There are still things that I can’t do, which can only be done in Flash. One is that I can’t take an image, rotate it 20 degrees and dropshadow it, and create a random stack of such rotated images with perfect dropshadowing.
The closest I can come to that is a JQuery dropshadow plugin renders a gradient-opacity shading beneath layers, and with the magic of .png or .gif transparency it indeed looks like real drop shadow – but of course doing this with a big png costs major bandwidth whereas Flash can do it with a fraction of the download time.
January 30th, 2009 at 3:47 am
Flash is evil! (God for banners, embedded content and games thou)
I just hate to navigate flash abusing sites (like the ones linked on this post), too much animation, loading times, custom navigations….
100% flash sites bring lots of usability problems and that really shouldn’t happen. Web users want to find what they want in 5 seconds, they don’t want to play games!
November 9th, 2009 at 6:34 am
Nice work, i will convey people to visit the site
May 21st, 2010 at 8:27 am
rabab from islamabad
your site is the one and the only one that i watch every day after completing my work.