[thelist] Flash Based E-Commerce Package
Seb Barre
sebastien at oven.com
Mon Dec 4 11:20:27 CST 2000
At 10:56 AM 12/4/2000 +0000, you wrote:
>Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers
>
>-------------------- Start of message text --------------------
>
>Begs the obvious question: why?
>
>Concentrating on the medium rather than the message (pace McLuhan
>fans) is rarely good business - witness pets.com etc - unless the medium
>brings unique value to what you're doing.
>
>One answer could be "Because it pays well", of course, but that's
>not being responsible to your clients.
Flash is a viable technology for e-commerce, if done right. I think that
some people are pre-disposed against Flash due to it's very frequent misuse
and abuse. As with any site/interface design, if you take the time to
properly plan out your usability and user flow through your site, and you
make it easy to navigate around and access all your features, then whether
it's HTML or Flash, it should work. Ignore these planning steps and unless
you're making something fairly simple, you risk failing badly (see boo.com).
I concede the point that it's much easier to misuse Flash than HTML
(although the entirety of Geocities and Xoom may prove me wrong on that),
and that many well-intentioned efforts go bad due to excessive
"Flashifying", but I've seen examples of nicely done Flash sites that are
quite functional and easy to use. I wish I could remember some that aren't
Oven's work (so I don't look like I'm just shamelessly plugging my
employer, yet again).
If used sensibly and intelligently, Flash can produce a very elegant, easy
to navigate site. Of course, I guess that can be said of any technology. =)
While on the vector topic:
Has anyone else out there investigated SVG in any detail? It's probably
too new to have as a requirement for the use of a site, but the XML-based
approach to vector rendering make it very attractive for dynamically
generated sites, since you don't need a proprietary server-side component
to generate the vector content (any CGI could do it), and it integrates
pretty seamlessly with other page elements.
Details: http://www.adobe.com/svg/
Mac Plugin: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/svgvmac.htm
Win32 Plugin: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/svgvwin.htm
--- -- -
Seb Barre - seb at oven.com
OVEN Digital Toronto
Work: 416-595-9750 x 222
Mobile: 416-254-5078
http://www.oven.com/
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