Two Fish Illustration and Design, Article
Standards Beat Up My Flash Site
Ok. I’ll admit it. I jumped on the power of Flash right away. With a name like that and sites that were amazingly powerful, who wouldn’t fall in love? You wait maybe 30 seconds to load a movie with a snazzy pre-loader and then things start zipping along to a sweet soundtrack. You search for the menu for another 30 seconds, happy to be tapping your foot to the “beats.” Life was good.
I was so impressed, I learned flash and began the long uphill journey towards the day I could launch my own site. I was half-way into my third flash re-design when I read “Designing with Web Standards” by Jeffery Zeldman. The book was not only an entertaining resource, but a giant step in the standards direction. I started to be convicted. I remember putting the book down and groaning. My snazzy flash work was not going to cut it.
The case for standards is convincing. Load speeds, bandwidth aside - the very fact that your site can play nice for more of your potential audience is reason alone. My own Mother was sick of waiting for my page to load. The speed of some flash sites leave many visitors in the dust. Not to mention people with disabilities. On this site now, you could get the content in a screen reader or with CSS disabled. I’m not where I want to be with all of this stuff, but my site is closer to being really accessible now than it ever was before. I’m excited to have come this far, knowing very little about html and css and standards prior.
Flash is still flash and that means it can do some amazing things. I’m not opposed to it for some sites, and certainly for some effects, it is the best format. I thought this site would be one of them, until I read Zeldman’s book. So with that in mind I present to you my site that almost was. It’s still got some things I’m very proud of and for that reason I’ll share it here. It’s only 1/2 done so be prepared for broken links all over the place. Enjoy - comments welcome.
1
Thus the challenge... It needs to look great AND work flawlessly. I appreciate how well this new non-flash functions. I am on dial-up (Grr!) and this thing still loads pretty fast. Bravo.
As spoken by Shawn W on 8.22.06
2
I haven't read Zeldman's book, but I'm a frequent visitor to his website (aren't we all?). I'm definately in line with his thinking, but I can't help but see the internet moving in a different direction. It's a different kind of medium, capable of all kinds of stuff. I just know that Flash sites will be completely accessible sooner or later. Whether that be because browsers know how to read them better, or because Flash itself outputs an accessible site. We're already seeing some of this due to Google's improved indexing of Flash websites. I'm just afraid that by the time Flash is the standard, I'll be behind in the game.
However, the goal for me will always be accessibility for the target audience. And if that means no Flash, then that's what I've got to do.
As spoken by Chris Huff on 8.22.06
3
I don't think that flash will become the standard. I think that flash, by nature of it's steep learning curve, will be used in circumstances that really warrant it. For example, on casowasco.org (a site I did in flash a while back, and will be re-designing using standards soon) the map of the grounds and the "virtual tour" work really well using flash. The content dictates the medium.
As spoken by Jacob on 8.24.06
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