Re: [OT] flash n stuff

[Robert "J. Hansen" <rjhansen@xxxxxxxx>]

> Monster bandwidth, multiple computers, and a geek to
> maintain it all.  Love Plug-ins of all sorts.  Takes
> NOTHING to get the plug-in and takes NOTHING to view
> the content.

As soon as you wind up porting the plugins to UNIX, let me know.  For a
lot of us, it takes quite a bit to get the plugin and quite a bit to
view the content.  Remember: the Web is a platform-neutral,
/display-neutral/ environment.  A webpage ought to be as useful on a
Windows 2000 machine running IE 5.5 as on a UNIX box running lynx.

> Plug-ins are great if you know how to install them,
> maintain them to the latest versions, and uninstall
> them and detangle them from your browser if/when
> things go wrong.  I'm all for it personally.  Why
> improve a product if no one is using it?  Plug-ins
> seem to be a dynamic way of displaying information and
> jazzing up the site.  I believe as connectivity speed
> and quality improve, the defacto standard would be for
> this dynamic media.

Arrrrrrgh.  Listen to yourself.  "If you know how to install them,
maintain them to the latest versions, and uninstall them and detangle
them from your browser if/when things go wrong".  Sounds too complex for
me by far, and I've got a bloody degree in the stuff.  Can I do
it?  Easily.  Do I /want/ to do it?  No, because I have far better
things to spend my time on.

Plugins can be useful, yes.  But they're also more trouble than they're
worth.  I've yet to see a single Flash animation that I thought
contributed to the content of a site, and I've seen plenty of Flash
animations that blur the line between content and presentation.  (Free
hint: the two ought to be completely separate.)

Plugins may be a "dynamic way of displaying information", but they break
the principle of the Web--that your browser gets to decide how to
display your information.  When the server gets to decide how things are
displayed on the client end, that's a violation of the separation of
content and presentation promise.

(Yes, I know most webpages nowadays violate this.  That doesn't mean
they should.)

> If you are really concerned about plug-ins for your
> site, consider splitting the site for "Lite" versions
> and "Full" versions.  It is a BUNCH of work, literally

Consider just implementing the "Light" version.  Content, content,
*content*.  Let me decide how I want things to be presented--that's what
the browser preferences are for.  Your job as a Web page designer is to
provide me with content and markup which my browser can use to determine
how it should be rendered--according to *my* preferences, not the site
owner's.

-- Robert J. Hansen, rjhansen@inav.net
-- OpenPGP key available on request