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Yes, but modern graphics-rich window managers and applications pull a lot more packets than the X windows of olden days. The first time I saw an X terminal, it was at a trade show in 1987. It was running through a 19,200 baud serial link and the apparent speed was very useable. But take, for instance, todays web browsing. I've got B3ta in another window in my X terminal which I'm posting this from. With that site's animated gifs and all, I'm consuming about 8,500 packets per second from the Konqueror client and feeding out about 1,500 OK packets per second back out to it.

If this were b3ta, Ray Ozzie and bro' jack would be getting plenty of "Woo! Yea!" right now.

A pantent such as this one could kill such a site (or at least make it seriously less fun)

That is uncanny. Where did you find that?

This is pretty sweet too.

You can find more info about this here.

Come on. This is not a time for partisan politics. It is a time for unity.

into their local paper as a kid's drawing symbolising "unity"...

Here's a reminder of what it's like:

IE Simulator

Realistic Internet Simulator?

Check this out!

Go to b3ta so everyone can have their very own 30 seconds of fame. :)

Odd you'd mention cats when I was just looking at this kitten page!

I know this is off topic; but I thought the coincidence was amazing!

Duck hunt has been replaced with kill the popups. ;)

You like your standard tools for searching and arranging your information. Flash sites disable many of these tools.

I agree. And I am a technical person. But it affects average users even more than me. If you take away the consistency of the interface, newbies will flounder. It's a fact, plenty of studies have been done on it - it's basic usability. Sure, they might notice different inconsistencies to me, but the effect is the same or worse.

A Flash site with its own interface is just dandy for certain applications, mostly those having to do with marketing, or presentation, or conceptual visualization.

I agree completely. But for a general-purpose website, for navigation - no way.

When I have a client that tells me they want a specific font, and sound effects

Clients ask for these kinds of things all the time. I say:

• You can suggest a specific font, but if it's an unusual font, most people will see one of the more common fonts. Some people will override your font completely because they find another font easier to read. Which "normal" font do you want to use as a fallback? Not to mention the discussion of serif vs sans-serif and so on...
• Sound can be highly irritating for many end-users, especially if they aren't expecting it. Virtually no high-profile business websites use sound, so unless there is a domain-specific reason for having sound, I would recommend against it. If there is a good reason for having sound, I would recommend that it not be activated automatically.

Of course, you can supply your own fonts with flash. Do sounds and specific fonts compare to removing the consistency of the user experience? No way. As for the next point:

and a 3d spin-around of their new shoe (for example), I say Flash every time.

Yes, something that needs this kind of interactivity (I'm assuming that you can zoom in, etc) would be a candidate for using flash, with a static image fallback. No way would I animate something like that on pageload though. Animations of that nature should begin animation when the user activates it (at least, when it's a looping animation).

It's a commerical, a glossy interactive brochure.

Advertising on the net is fundamentally different to "commercials". Media like TV are find for that kind of thing, it's non-interactive. The internet is user-driven, and when surfing, people are incredible task-oriented. A "glossy interactive brochure" exists on a website for one reason - to let the visitors get the information, and perhaps to order from it.

When flash helps that goal, I say go for it. Can a user get a better idea of what the product is like with a zooming, 3d model of it? In some cases, yes. Does it hinder the user (page load time, plugin popups, non-standard interface) without any real benefit? In a hell of a lot of cases, yes.

There are plenty of design agencies out there offering flash as an added benefit for extra money. Of course they will recommend it, even if it doesn't help their client in any way.

My point is, don't blame the tech, and don't blame Flash for crappy navigation.

I agree, I never said otherwise. But website navigation with flash is usually an abuse of flash - I've certainly never seen an appropriate use of flash in this way.

in situations where one wants to immerse themselves and casually browse a rich experience with sound, the right fonts, and a generally superior (depending...) experience, Flash is great.

Very few websites fall into this category. Very few users go to a site, and want to sit back and watch a commercial. They have a purpose, and it's the website's job to give them the information they need. Websites that don't do that are measurably less successful than those that do.

Oh by the way, indexing is not a problem.

No, if you provide alternate navigation that isn't flash-based. Most people clueless enough to use flash for navigation are clueless enough to not realise they need to do this. I know of no search engine that parses, or even retrieves, swf files.

And stylesheets, as cool as they are, cannot compete with absolute sub-pixel vector positioning.

You are merely picking one attribute of flash and claiming that stylesheets cannot compete because of it? Please explain what "absolute sub-pixel vector positioning" means, and why it is useful. Then explain how I can override it in my browser to get the look that I want.

Not to mention, as a web designer, I have far less problems debugging a Flash site between browsers, as the plug-in is more consistent than the HTML engine.

Which plug-in? You know there's more than one, right? Personally, I routinely disabled flash on all my machines, because there was a bug that hung my browser whenever flash tried to access the audio device. I only enable it when I absolutely have to (usually, I just go to a different website). I can think of a single website I visit on a (semi) regular basis that uses flash, and it provides a non-flash interface too. Guess which I find more convenient?

Oh, and as an example of how sound on a website can be irritating, visit this at work: Top 10 Cutest Kittens. Actually, don't visit it at work, I don't want to get you fired :)

Your spelling.

Kittens make the day go faster

Seriously though, the last thing any of us need to see is more of this junk. the worst is when you're on an IE machine and along come the unclosable popups... yeuch!

The Realistic Internet Simulator (Macromedia Flash required)

Did someone mention kittens? Click here for the TOP 10 CUTEST KITTENS!

Together in Electric Dreams