[thelist] flash accessibility/usability

[Erik Mattheis]

At 10:13 AM +0000 2/28/02, martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com wrote:
>My point all along has been "It's difficult to tell whether the problem
>is with the tool, or the way it's used - but if it's so commonly misused
>does the distinction matter?"

Uninstall the Flash Player if the net effect bothers you - that act
will have little impact on the world. But there just might be some
young budding developers here that could possibly tip the scales of
bad Flash vs. good Flash, and I'd hate to see any potential interest
in Flash discouraged. Anyhow, if Flash's overall nature is such that
it's more harmful than good, it will eventually bring about it's own
demise (at least I don't see a well funded Flash swindle going on).

>Y'see, that's one of the basic problems with Flash - very few people
>*know* when it adds value.

Who's "value" are you adding? Although you might disagree, I think
there's been quite a bit of thought and research that's gone into
websites promoting major motion pictures, fore example ... I don't
remember the last time I went to a movie site that wasn't heavy on
the Flash. And I agree that often, the barrier it puts between me and
the soundtrack listing or pix or cast bios irritates me ... but
that's us - there's a hell of a lot of people that DON'T spend 8-12
hours a day connected to the Internet: the further we can take them
from the experience of newspapers and delivery receipts and faxes and
inventory sheets and amber and black CRT's - well, the better the
Internet experience seems to them.

And maybe you'd also want to add a large ISP's "value" into it: I
couldn't begin to imagine how much bandwidth would be saved if even
10% of the animated gifs out there would have been done in Flash ...
and that includes the extra JavaScript and HTML you'd need to be
absolutely certain the visitor saw a Flash movie or a bitmap. And you
can export an animated GIF from the same Flash source file in about
as long as it takes to type "animation1.gif". The Flash would look
better too.

At 10:17 AM +0000 2/28/02, martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com wrote:
>in what situations would you tell a client
>that using Flash would be A Bad Idea?

You'd be surprised at the number of ways I have of saying, "The thing
is that the navigation and a simple logo can download in just a
second or two, and then we can show them the intro with sound and
stuff."

>And what would you tell a
>client are the limitations of Flash?

Half my clients have been places that already know what Flash can and
can't do and the other half don't bother to ask whether something can
be done in Flash but just ask if it's possible in general.

But few times, I've explained in lay person's terms that some
browsers won't allow a Flash movie with a transparent background and
others won't allow it to be in anything but the highest z-index and
the ones that can supposedly these things flicker while trying to do
it.

In the days of Flash 2 or 3 and 133 MHz processors I had to once make
drastic revisions to a storyboard that would have run at just a few
frames per second for most people.

Someone once wanted a Quicktime movie to display in Flash ... one can
display Flash around a Quicktime movie, but that requires the
Quicktime Player ... so that killed that idea.

I can't think of anything else and none of these things have
(realistic) non-Flash equivalents anyway ... not sure why I didn't
just note that it wouldn't make sense to think about using Flash for
something it was limited from doing.
--

__________________________________________
- Erik Mattheis

(612) 377 2272
http://goZz.com/

__________________________________________