[thelist] Flash Based E-Commerce Package

[Seb Barre]

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/