[thelist] Please tell me why I hate Flash

John Dowdell jdowdell at macromedia.com
Tue Apr 24 19:01:36 CDT 2001


At 8:26 AM 4/20/1, deke  wrote:
> It's the designer's fault for choosing Flash.
> The latency and incompatibility issues, though, are Flash's

If you're seeing latency, something's wrong. The Macromedia Flash Player
itself starts up very quickly, and content can appear as soon as the first
frame streams in... matter of fact, for comparable content you should
expect to see well-formed SWFs display *before* HTML does.

Key concepts: Single packet, streaming delivery, fast startup, predictable
interactivity engine.

(I'd reply to the rest of your messages, but they're long, and repetitive,
and don't seem to be well-grounded in thoughtful response... bad UI design,
almost makes me want to swear off email, after all you don't see email at
Safeway or in movie theatres, and I defy anyone to show me any good email
which was ever written, and, and.... ;-)



At 8:51 AM 4/22/1, <sales at iibiz.com> wrote:
> #1 - citing the manufacturers' web site as the be all, end all
> authority on their own product is silly.  (And yes, I see people
> do it all the time.) Their statisics on how many people have it
> installed are inflated, and of course they're gonna say it's the
> best thing in the world.  It's THEIR product!  I know I've seen
> statistics on-line by "outside" parties that show the number is
> much lower.

But dismissing such info simply because of where it's published is likely
equally as silly.... ;-)

Please do check the "methodology" links there... it shows how MediaMetrix
has measured actual viewership in their standard consumer focus groups,
quarter by quarter. There are also sample tests there so you can see
exactly how viewership is tested.

(Your "outside statistics" usually measure things *other* than actual
viewership, such as how many Netscape browsers answer a navigator.plugins
query. This carries the implication that Netscape and the larger IE/Win
audiences must have identical viewership ratios which, considering ActiveX
auto-installs, is demonstrably not the case. Media Metrix is measuring
actual viewability among representative consumer groups, instead of
measuring Netscape visitors to sites using certain tracking utilities.)


> When you do a site for a small-mid-large company, usability IS
> the key.  How are you going to sell THEIR widgets when your
> site takes forever to open, and all your competitors don't.

Absolutely agree. If a given message can be more effectively conveyed to a
given audience via HTML than SWF, then heck, go with text.

That said, a well-designed SWF will start very quickly in a normal browser.



At 9:15 AM 4/22/1, aardvark wrote:
> well, i did the install, and not only did it clearly want to close
> all my browser windows (i have 15 open right now since i'm doing work
> and research), but it wanted to take it to the next step and restart
> my machine...

For "How might I see an installer request to restart the machine?" then the
most frequent way this happens is when you're trying to replace an ActiveX
Control which has already been used in that session. (There can be a silent
update of an uninvoked control, but if it's registered, it needs to be
restarted.) This will happen for whichever reason you try to update your
browser, sorry.


> so a 1-2 minute install (as Macromedia says) for me will take
> something like 20 minutes between the download, install, and
> reboot, adn relaunching of all my other apps...

Still, all those bajillions of consumers out there have already installed it.

(If you believe that your situation is representative of all other people,
then I guess you're testifying that they have found strikingly compelling
reasons to go through such an agonizing and terrifying process.... ;-)




Summary: You have various methods available to you. For a particular job,
use the one that best satisfies your client, and your client's clients. Be
happy.


jd







John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US
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