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Now that I have discovered HomeStarRunner, I can never hear mention of the game Adventure without thinking about this

Somebody get this freakin' duck away from me!

(Move your pointer over the e-mail button if you don't get it...)

--Sam L-L

Hehe...I believe it's: "Somebody get this freakin' duck away from me!" (Move mouse over email)

What about a bucket and a blowhorn?

listen to this

Under treaties like NAFTA, a company can challenge the laws of a member country, claiming that the said member country is not allowing their product to be sold within the same environment that they enjoy within their own country. I wonder if something like this *did* happen how long would it take for microsoft to buy their way into a political fight to get the australian government to do what microsoft wants.

Open your mind to corporate interest RATM
Best site on the internet homestarrunner, specifically strongbad email

Under treaties like NAFTA, a company can challenge the laws of a member country, claiming that the said member country is not allowing their product to be sold within the same environment that they enjoy within their own country. I wonder if something like this *did* happen how long would it take for microsoft to buy their way into a political fight to get the australian government to do what microsoft wants.

Open your mind to corporate interest RATM
Best site on the internet homestarrunner, specifically strongbad email

Annoying to you, maybe. Good thing the whole world doesn't have your sense of taste, though, or we wouldn't have such triple delights as Homestar Runner.

Wow. What a great site. That little icon in the middle is really cute, and the popup that says "This page contains information of a type (application/x-shockwave-flash) that can only be viewed with the appropriate Plug-in" is totally cool. I keep reloading the page so that I can watch it pop-up again.

Seriously though, this is all I get when I visit the page, and thus is an example of nothing other than incompetence. I neither have nor particularly desire a flash plugin, and the site gives me no incentive whatsoever to get one. I can't tell the first thing about what content may or may not be present on the site, that may or may not warrant a download of the plugin they'd like me to use. Not surprising, Google and other search engines can't tell either.

Google, fortunately, is pretty smart, and a search for "homestar runner" brings up the right listing, with a short description of, "Original web cartoons and games." Too bad I had to use Google to find that out. Now, obviously, cartoons and web games aren't going to be that amusing for someone who can't see them, but Christ, would it really kill them to put some text on the site?

Annoying to you, maybe. Good thing the whole world doesn't have your sense of taste, though, or we wouldn't have such triple delights as Homestar Runner.

Borrrrring..................

To quote Strong Bad, "too much of a good thing is an awesome thing. But too much of an awesome thing is ... umm ... really, really dumb."

This is almost too much of an awesome thing. But it's awesome nonetheless.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/main13.html (hover over e-mail button). :)

Dragons?

To quote Strongbad: "Someone get this freaking duck away from me!"

(Hint: homestarrunner for those who do not know.)

Flash, Shockwave, and COBOL. They all have a few uses, and they all are liked best by crazy people.

Does it take its face and hands off before it goes to bed? What kind of powers does it have? And does it use them for good, or for awesome?

Strong Bad wants to know!

As anybody who has ever visited Homestar Runner & Strong Bad can tell you, Flash is a critical feature :)

That reminded me of one thing... DELETED!!

Yup, it's off-topic, and probably hard to follow if you've never been to the site, but it's a riot.

Ok- That site isn't easy to navigate.

All I saw was

• Black background
• Big white box w/ puzzle icon, "Click here to get the plugin"
• Window title: "Everybody! Everybody! - Mozilla {build id: 2002031104}"

Without any sort of a non-flash navigation (or even an intuitive page title), the user has...

• No idea what the company name is
• no clue what they do
• no desire to return.

Flash itself is not to blame for usability problems on websites - check out http://www.homestarrunner.com and tell me that site isn't easy to navigate.

We'll let's take a look in my current browser...

[EMBED]

Wow, that is the easiest navigation I've ever seem. It's immediately clear the homestarrunner specializes in minimalist poetry. Clearly, after extensive usability research, they determined that too many options can confusing and reduced the navigation options to a bare minimum: none.

Because homestarrunner assumed I was able to view their animation, they haven't even bothered to provide a brief summary for those of us without Flash. If they had provided a brief message explaining the sites purpose and why I reasonably need flash, perhaps I'd open a Netscape window to check it out. As it is, it's completely opaque. I see no reason to bother investigating further, so I'm gone. If a blind user who wandered into the site he would be completely out of luck.

Flash can be useful and valuable. But if you use Flash the most important rule is provide some sort of explaination message for those users who don't have it. Something like "Unfortunately, you'll need Flash to view our entertaining cartoon" or "You'll need Flash to view the 3d model of the the bike, however you can still browse the rest of our site without it."

Flash (the development tool) enables people to create relatively complex animations and interactive sites with amazing ease. Flash itself is not to blame for usability problems on websites - check out http://www.homestarrunner.com and tell me that site isn't easy to navigate. :)

Until there are real, viable alternatives to Flash that have 96% browser penetration (this statistic is from Macromedia, of course, so it may or may not be 100% true) then it'll be the best tool for the job.

(Someone suggested PHP as an alternative? You really think doing this stuff in PHP will be as easy without any GUI-based tools??)