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This is all about the county getting some free development/consulting labor.

The county gets a new webpage, to include amongst a vast array of mostly unuseful and disparate pages, with marginally useful information gleaned from public records.

The winner gets a cookie.

Yay! It's all techie and stuff.

Ahem. I'd like to take that point out.

As with any technology, you get people who have no idea what they are doing who shouldn't be doing it. As an earlier poster pointed out, taking HTML created by Frontpage and doing anything meaningful with it is a nightmare. If you start with the standards all along, then conforming to them is a lot easier.

But Flash is more than just a pretty image viewer. Actionscript can be a powerful tool not only for manipulating frames, but for XML parsing, server to client communication, and lots of other uses. Take for example a prototype at http://www.cornetdesign.com/e2xml.asp. Nothing flashy about it, it's primary job is to take a dynamically generated XML document from Everything and convert it to a format for people using Pocket PC's. Is it the best for the platform? Maybe, maybe not. Another group of developers is working on a native platform viewer.

So please spare me the argument that because lousy designers do lousy stuff with a product, that the product sucks. I'm sure I could build a C++ application that would really suck. But that does not mean that the language sucks, only that I didn't know the proper methods.

This also falls into the long load times. It does not cause long load times when it is streamed properly. But if you get some lazy developer who does not feel like using that, then you get long load times. Again, a developer issue.

And Flash might be proprietary (though my spidey sense reminds me of a open-source viewer and builder I have seen somewhere), but what it is built on - SVG - is not.

>For website viewers who do not want to run Flash and other Macromedia software, or cannot, web sites using it are broken.

Unless the website designers have taken the time to develop a version that is accessible to all. But there are some things that, in order to do the things the customer wants, require you to exclude certain browser users. This is not (actually should not) be because of the developer, but because of what the client wants most of the time. I have fought many a battle for our site to keep it from being taken over by DHTML and the like. The day I see "Best viewed by" at the bottom of the site is the day I know I have lost.

So again, please don't let the crappy developers, or the lazy developers, or the ones who have been instructed to do what they have done or lose their job detracted from the things that can be done with Flash when done properly.

I noticed you have an email form on your website. It reminded me about something almost no webmasters seem to take responsibility for. Email customer service.

MAKE SURE SOMEONE IS READING AND RESPONDING TO EMAIL.

You wouldn't (well, you shouldn't) have incoming mail or phonecalls that no one checks and responds to, so don't do it with email. If someone goes on leave, either monitor their inbox, or set up an autoresponder (always check they are actually working, and keep checking it).

If you have a large volume of email correspondance, have a seperate email response group, don't allocate it as something to be done in spare time.

Have a procedure about how all this is to be done, and how long it should take for email to be responded to.

There will be people who are supposed to follow this, who have no idea how email really works.

Email is not an optional extra if it's used for public or client contact.

If I rang a store or office and left a message, and got a return call 2 weeks later, I wouldn't be impressed. Same goes for email.

Think this isn't the responsibility of a webmaster? who knows the mail links are available to the public?

Unless there is a notice near all email links that it is not a priority for replies, or to expect a delay, most people will assume a quick response.

Now while the monitoring etc may not be what the webmaster is doing, someone needs to make sure the rest of the organisation is using the website properly.

Letting the web group know when email addresses become defunct, or staff leave/arrive.

Letting the web group know when staff are going on leave, or are away for the day (if one day makes a difference in your work).

A website is like a virtual office in a lot of ways, and it all needs to function properly.

Don't be a weak link in the chain.