[thelist] flash accessibility/usability (was: Jakob Nielsen [was Anti-aliasing])

Erik Mattheis gozz at gozz.com
Tue Feb 26 00:06:00 CST 2002


>so, if they can be accomplished, why aren't more people removing these
>stumbling blocks to the usability/accessibility of flash?  answer -- it
>takes too much work to discover all the built-in browser functionality you
>need to include and then build programming logic within your flash file to
>handle.

Agreed. But that doesn't equate to a conclusion that Flash is bad -
this is what I'm arguing against - assuming that Flash is inherently
bad because it can be difficult to learn how to use and when not to
use it.

To say Flash is bad because it has limitations is idiotic: If one
wanted to, one could make an entire website of gif graphics - and in
most cases this would be a horrible decision. But I've seen sites
that do just that. Does that make gifs bad?

>even if it did work, would it scroll the amount i
>have my mousewheel configured to scroll at a time?

I doubt it would work ... the reason I'm unsure about the scrollwheel
thing is that Flash can tell what keys are being pressed just like
you can in JavaScript, but I'm not sure whether the scrollwheel is
visible to Flash.

>scrollbars and buttons are sized according to my preferences.  ask rudy
>about his 36 pixel wide scrollbars.  now, tell him you're building an all
>flash site and it'll have 12 pixel wide scrollbars.  he's not going to be
>happy and for good reason.

Myself, I'd recommend against using Flash to display paragraphs of
scrollable text in almost all situations. I've never done it myself,
and the only time I've even used non-scrollable paragraph text in a
Flash movie was for a site that designs CD-ROMS - they wanted their
site to look like a CD-=ROM presentation ... so in that case, it was
entirely appropriate. Caveat: I have done a scrolling text field that
someone else used in one of their projects.

But again, same argument ... if the disadvantages of using Flash
outweigh the advantages, it's most likely the best decision not to
use Flash. But if someone has made a movie that pisses Rudy off, it
doesn't mean  Flash is bad. Indeed, on sites I've done that have
Flash and non-Flash versions, the Flash version is always the more
popular one.

>i'd love to see some examples of flash movies that have successfully
>overcome some of the issues i mentioned that you've dismissed as solvable.
>educate me please.

Well, here's some scrollbars in Flash that for the most part work
like "real" scrollbars:

http://gozz.com/temporary/gozz_scroll/scroll_02_02_25.html

When clicking on the bar outside of the thumb, it jumps to where ever
in the text the user clicks - ie, click at 2/3rds the way down the
bar and it jumps so that the top line is 2/3rd of the way through the
text ... that's what I wanted it to do. It would be possible to alter
the behavior so it goes one page up if clicked above the thumb or one
page down if clicked below. And of course, if one wanted to, one
could make them look exactly like the default scrollbars for any
browser you wanted.

And no, it doesn't look at your OS settings to get the scroll speed
... if that's possible, I don't know how to do it.
--

__________________________________________
- Erik Mattheis

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

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