web builders

[aladdinhere]

Hi
i have made few site. used dreamwaiver and flash. flash is good to. try readin their tutorial and lesson will find very easy. i learnt them in just 3 hrs. try it out.

[embro1001]

If you want to see some serious flash...check out anything by 2advanced.

2advanced Home
Pixel Ranger

Great flash. Great.

[adiz]

I really don't like Flash all that much. I think that certain sites are amazing with it and I think that it is sometime useful, but there are so many times that Flash is worthless and does not need to be there, you must remember that a large portion of todays online community is still on a 56k Dial-Up. This probably belongs in web development but oh well.


- Adiz

[embro1001]

Originally posted here by adiz
you must remember that a large portion of todays online community is still on a 56k Dial-Up.

- Adiz

Like me . I don't use flash for most of my designs, because I don't know how to use it, and it isn't natively supported in any of my Linux browsers. One thing I've learned is to design sites that are accessible to a wide arrangement of browsers, rather than making the page fit for one particular piece of software.

[AngelicKnight]

That is indeed an issue, isn't it? I know there's plenty of us that would like to flash out our websites pretty crazily, but it wasn't all that long ago when I was on dial-up and that kinda thing would drive me nuts. Blasted dial-up, always in the way!!!

[valhallen]

dial-up doesn't need to be a problem....it is a common misconception that flash pages take a long time to download etc etc etc

but not if constructed properly - remember you can construct a flash site much the same as a normal website....in modules.

Imagine each HTML page is a seperate module...you want to see a page, you click the link and it loads the requested module (page)

You can do the same within the flash site/movie - have one large 'container' movie which contains nothing more than a series of....well place holders....making it very quick to download - then when a user wants to see a certain part of the site - they click a link and it loads that part in using the LoadMovie command

also you can make use of 'idle' bandwith - while a user is viewing your intro page or whatever you can have flash in the background begin preloading any of the larger elements (movies, sounds etc) that the user may wish to see after they have finished browsing other elements of the site.

The only problem is that Flash still requires a plugin to play - but with the large quantity of sites using it now it is becoming more & more common for people to have the player (something like 85% I think) currently can view Flash movies in their browsers.

But I think that once it becomes even more widely utilised - which it will with more and more people getting high speed connections - Flash's ability to quickly and easily stream anything from 2D animation, 3D renderings or even Full motion Video (to name only a few) while presenting them in a fully interactive interface which encourages user interaction will become invaluable and the player will become as standard on all Windows and Linux machines (who cares about MAC users ) ohhh alright and MAC's as well - lol

v_Ln

[MilitantEidolon]

You bring up very good points.

Another thing I think a problem with flaish is, when you view the web? Do you just view the web or do you open up other proggies (music player, text editor, html editor, chatting on IM/IRC). I do this and I am sure others do, so for the poor bastard running AOL 8.0 and they encounter a site with flash running it and they find out they have to DL a plug-in they will most likely look for a site with the same info in HTML (or equivilent).

But thats not fair lets say they do have the Plugin so the site starts downloading and they are having a steamy conversation with a -- 20yr old, Swedish, Supermodel, Virgin on IM that they met in a chatroom and you are trying to get his...er...I mean her pictures. Not only will they be annoyed that the site is taking up bandwidth to load but they will want to continue talking to the 43yr old male impersonater trading some week porno pics with 15 yr boys.

Flash seems more demanding on the connection than HTML. I am not a pro in flash or nothing so I will of course have a bios opinion (i can use flash just choose not to).

I think that there will be a sequel to Flash that will take the interenet by storm one that will destroy that 2d - 3d world and pretty soon you will be able to almost feel that 20 swedish lasses body (oh yeah..you like that...wait what is that......aaahhhh!!!!!!!!)

Maybe flash is the answer but I don't really like it and think it is overused!

- MilitantEidolon

[valhallen]

well in the scenario its all the users fault for having AOL in the first place

Ok so lets take the situation that you have outlined - it does pose some problems for the flash developer as we can not tell at what parts of the movie the end user may be wanting to do other things over their connection. Now you could ahve Flash test the speed at which it is downloaded elements - if the speed drops below a certain point you will then know that the user is doing something else which is sapping their bandwith so flash can stop preloading in the background (but can continue to do tests at set intervals - loading small files and checking speed so that when there are moments of low badwith usage it then begins to download in the background again)

But with if there is no moments of low bandwith usage? well then its back to the good old loading bar - but unlike when a webpage is loading and you can do nothing but stare at a blank screen or image as it slowly gets bigger...you can incorporate a whole host of things into your flash loader to keep the user busy - animations, games etc

ahhhh I hear you say but wont that increase the file size? no not really a simple example of a game could be tetris - the blocks can be drawn in Flash using its own vector tools (creating very very very small image sizes) and then due to the nature of the game one symbol can be reused over and over again

all you gotta do is add in the code to control the game elements and your away! Infact if you wanted to get really smart you could have Flash use the new drawing API's to construct the lines/fills on the fly meaning that you wouldn't have to include any images at all as flash would draw them at runtime for you!

v_Ln

[MilitantEidolon]

val - I understand the concept behind the tetris example. It is the same way with regular HTML design when you reuse an image it stays in the temp and is called quicker and is only DL once.

I see your point with the Flash animation. But I still am not ready to move the corp site to a Flash Base.

Just cause I see you point doesn't mean I have to accept it

- MilitantEidolon

[valhallen]

heh np
i understand where your coming from as well - theres room for all sorts of languages/techniques in webdesign. Flash will never fully replace them as it is still dependant in HTML to display it properly in the browser (yes you can have the browser load up the .swf by itself but it will be improper size etc)
Also if you are looking to have Flash interact with a DB etc you need to have it use some php code (or the like) to transfer information back and fwd - so Flash can't do everything on its own

What it excels at tho is vreating the front end - the area in which the user interacts - the visible bit.......ok so its fed by php for example but Flash can present the information in a much more visually attractive way than php can IMHO

v_Ln