On The Perplexing Prevalence Of Plug-Ins...

Element5 asks: "Recently I've noticed more and more Web pages are requiring plug-ins to be viewed at all. Most notable of these such pages are movie sites. Some sites are built entirely with Director or Flash (I only use Flash as an example as it is seemingly the most prevalent plug-in requirement out there). Am I the only one who finds this trend disturbing? It's almost as if Web site developers are skipping the whole process of learning HTML entirely and instead rely on an authoring tool based on a proprietary technology. Don't get me wrong, Macromedia's products are fantastic ones; but I'd much rather see them used in throw-away aspects of a Web site that can be dropped if a user doesn't have the plug-ins, or on a site which also hosts an HTML version with exactly the same features. At any rate, I'm just wondering what other people think about this trend." Read on...

I too understand the frustration behind encountering sites like this. I understand that it's hard work to create and maintain sites with multiple "versions" for browsers of varying capabilities, but I thought the primary purpose of a Web site was to make oneself seen, and wouldn't it make sense to make yourself seen by the lowest-common-denominator before adding all of the glitz and chrome? Would a static version of a site that makes extensive use of Flash be that hard to design, especially since most of the key artwork should have been done for the animation?

Comments

The /real/ problem with plugins...

[yellowstone]

1. They are too often closed-source trojans to gather personal information for the marketing department (and yes, even once is too often for me)

2. There are far too many "multimedia plugins", all incompatable with each other.

3. The plugin developers are constantly releasing new versions with kewl new features, which mean that people are creating content to use the kewl new features, which means the plugin you just downloaded to view content using the lame old features is now obsolete. Time to download the latest version (which will be obsolete moments after you finish downloading).

4. And once you plow through the junk so you can finally see the "multimedia content", it turns out to be incredibly lame... :=P

I used to listen to spinner.com, but the last time I started the client and got the sorry, you must upgrade to the latest version message, I finally decided it was in no way worth it and just uninstalled.

-y

Overdoing it all

[simpleguy]

Overuse of plugins has always been bad.
Some websites require flash not for decorative content but critical stuff like navigating within the website.

Others have JAVA navigation bars. Generally, I surf with javascript/java disabled so as to avoid the popups and reduce the risk of netscape crashing on me.

There are other plugins that just SUCK. An example is vivo. While vivo movies are small, have you ever tried seeking a specific spot in a vivo movie? Tried rewinding or fast forwarding? I downloaded a couple of anime movies in vivo and whenever I need to re-view a specific portion, I need to see the WHOLE movie over again.

This is a typical case where I would prefer Real content or the plain old mpeg 1 format.

Web designers, remember that not everyone has feature-packed browsers. There are times I need to download something but wait... I want to do that on my shell account with wget. Duh! I need to have java/javascript enabled or some other fancy plugin to even ENTER the site.

Please, if you really really need to design a whole website in flash or director or whatever plugin, consider making a 'normal html' version also. PLEASE.

Some of you might argue that we are no longer in the console days and I am just old-coloured. Thats up to you. I will be just one less visitor to your site, right? Who cares about the small minority of die-hard geeks who love lightweight, console (insert favourite) stuff? We are still users who wish to visit your website. Consider us.

Awaiting nods of approval and/or flames.

most people have the plugins...

[Capt Dan]

Quite frankly, most web users in the world are using windows with netsacpe or IE.

Current versions of netsacpe and IE either:
1) ship with these plugins (if they are popluar enough) or
2) will automatically down and install them without the user having to do anything (not even a reboot!)

Sure html is great. I remember writing up pages back in the day with notepad.

But in this day and age where a lot of money is put into designing cool sites that will bring people back, designers are going to go with whatever lets them create glitz and flash. Especially when 95+% of their users have or can easily get the necessary plugins.

How important are these plugins? I have a very knowledgeable friend that designs web pages usign flash script. Bright guy, geek, runs linux at home etc. Last month he point blank told me that "Flash 4.0 will bury html"

You can complain about it all you want, but it isn't going away. Maybe mozilla will have some kind of easy plugin porting layer so *nix users can get plugins faster.


"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2

The future will be slower

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

In the next 2-3 years we expect those users to have upgraded

That's not what I was told. In the coming years, expect people trying to access your pages from mobile phones and TV sets ("What do you mean "my TV Internet box is old"? It's only 5 years old!") and exotic countries with bad connections. Of course, you may not be interested in them.
But for a general-purpose site you should have in mind slow connections and crude interfaces.

Beware of the Boo.com.
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