I dunno. A lot of the great classics that we stand in awe of today were denounced when they were penned. Look at Ulysses for example, it was labelled a load of smut and banned in many countries, most notably in Ireland.
We have all these incredible new technologies for communications, literature and entertainment and our great cultural accomplishments are sequels to Cinderella and Scooby Doo.
Cinderella wasn't written by Disney. It's a children's classic and certainly qualifies as 'literature.' It's a good point about sequels, but to say that these are our greatest cultural achievements is to overstate it a little. Look at Troy, for example, the Illiad for the masses. On the other hand, it was made for people who don't want to hear about Achilles having a bf. Maybe you have something there....
Gif is only ever used for annoying animated banner ads! It's not capable of doing anything else! Gif is evil! Gif is used by bozos! I hate Gif! Yadda yadda yadda.....
[There. That should earn me some karma if the recent Flash flame war is anything to go by.]
But having every page designer make their own arbitrary choice that gets forced on all of us is always wrong.
Says who? You? Is it not better that page designers get better control over how the finished product looks?
Having to scroll through a page a bit isn't a problem.
And if this flash app had you scrolling down the page you'd be the first to complain. Having to scroll down a page to see information that could easily be displayed without having to scroll is a problem.
in-page "scrollbars" which aren't necessary and don't look or behave like system-standard scrollbars are.
What do you mean they're not necessary? They ARE necessary! I see tonnes of application programs that have scrollbars inside windows. It's the same functionality here. As for looking different from system-standard scrollbars, what's the problem with that? If they're consistent with the look of the application then it's a good thing, especially if it's a slick looking app.
The "form" is similarly awful: it doesn't look at all like a normal text entry field, so one can only discover its behaviour by clicking randomly.
You're truly clutching at straws here. The form does not 'look awful,' it looks a damn sight better than any ugly HTML form I've ever seen, and anyone who can't see right away from the context that they are form fields is either dense or just pretending to be stupid so he can whinge about the form looking different from what he's used to.
And once you've done that, the field labels disappear when you try using them, forcing you to just remember what each is.
Incorrect. When you click into another field the label reappears.
the fact that the room-class descriptions and pictures are exclusive means that in order to compare them, I need to toggle back and forth between them
Well that's quite easy to do since you're not wating for a whole page of HTML to reload.
use the teeny little faux-scrollbar to scroll the teeny viewport across the teeny text
Hysterical exaggeration. These components are no smaller than their counterparts in any standard application program.
this Flash which you point out as being "designed properly" is rife with needless usability gaffes
No, you're just scraping the bottom of the barrel of excuses to pick holes in a sophisticated flash app that could never be implemented in DHTML because you have a prejudiced dislike for this technology and a personal problem with the type of people who develop it.
allowing text selection
The designer has decided that you don't need to select text. And he's right, once you make your reservation, all the info you need will be emailed to you where you can select text to your heart's content.
This example seems to serve the argument against Flash much better than the argument for it.
No, it's an example of how to piss off open-source fundamentalists by showing that proprietary standards are sometimes better than any open-source alternative, although in this case there is no alternative that could come even close in functionality, usability or presentation.
Looks like the open-source fundamentalists have hit you with an 'over-rated' mod. Maybe we should start some sort of dissident pro Flash group on here and see what we can do about modding pro Flash posts with the points they deserve. What do you think?
Ugliness is subjective. I happen to think that this Flash application is quite attractive. Just because it is different from what I am used to seeing on the web every day does not make it ugly.
Your comment about non-functionality is way off. This Flash application is a hundred times more functional than any dozen-step HTML form submission process. The functionality of this thing lets you try different dates, different rooms and see the results of your decisions at a glance. I wouldn't even bother making the same sort of selections in a HTML form because I know I'd be sitting there looking out the window waiting for the subsequent pages to re-load every time I change a criterion.
BTW, the progress bar only appears once when the application has loaded. After that it goes like lightening.
Here is what the HTML and open-source fundamentalists on/. can't get into their heads. The web was designed using the metaphor of a page. This is fine if all you are doing is displaying pages of information. The web was not designed to be used as an application with lots of interaction with the user, and the more functional sites like Travelocity, Amazon, Expedia etc. have very clunky interfaces that are constrained by the fact that they must push application-level functionality into a page-based environment. It's like making edits to a Word document where you have to destroy the page and recreate it from scratch (waiting for it to load each time) every time you make an edit. Flash-based web applications allow application-level functionality to take place in a web browser. They combine the best of both worlds, the reach of the web and the functionality of the application.
Let me put it this way. Show me a HTML-based solution that can pack all that functionality into a single page without having to do a complete page reload at least once. And please, no lectures about DHTML and a squillion other combined technologies that can supposedly do the same thing. Nit-picking about the colours of scrollbars doesn't count.
I'm not sure what you mean by "XML parsing (last time I checked SVG couldn't do that in its authoring tool)"--what is the SVG authoring tool? Sodipodi or such?
In the Flash authoring tool you can use ActionScript to parse XML data from external sources and display it in the swf where the user can then be allowed to manipulated it at his heart's content. If additional data is needed by the user, the swf can ask for an additional stream of data to be parsed in without having to destroy the page and re-load the whole thing from scratch. This is one of the main benefits of Flash, not animations. Unfortunately it seems to be very hard to get this message heard here, a lot of people seem to have already made their minds up about Flash because it's a proprietary standard and are digging around for any excuse to denounce it, even blaming the technology for any abuses that Flash developers come up with. It's a bit like denouncing C because that's what viruses are written in.
You can use a text editor to develop swf files too in the same way that you talk about developing svg, but the Flash authoring tool is a lot more powerful.
For video--& if you're using Flash as the comparison, I guess you mean synchronized sound and animation
So many innacuracies in there it's hard to know where to begin.
Microscopic text
Designer's fault, not the technology
irritating animation is supposed to be an example of good use of Flash?
Designer's fault, not the technology. Nobody said that was a good example.
Designer's fault, not the technology
Only if the designer decides to prevent you from copying and pasting. A bit like pdf. Designer's fault, not the technology
individual pages within the Flash can't be bookmarked
You only need to bookmark pages if the usability of the site is so bad that it's a day's work getting at the information you want. Travelocity and Expedia have highly functional sites for airline bookings but they're rendered in HTML. Would you really want to bookmark one of those pages? I think not.
Flash defeats the most fundamental design goals of the Web: flexibility, implementation-independence, and content over presentation.
Only when it's abused by bad designers. The exact same argument could be applied to a lot of sites out there done in DHTML.
Flash allows web designers--not me--to choose how things look on my system.
And HTML allows you to decide how a website looks? Sure.
Flash interferes with most of the functions usually performed by a web browser: in-page searching, history, bookmarking, content filtering.
Usually because a flash-based website, when designed properly like the Broadmoor Hotel perform those functions a whole lot better than any clunky web browser that was never designed to perform those functions in the first place.
If the blinky-flashy-advertising part of this huge flash monstrosity were a separate image, I could just choose to not display it. But because it's part of the same single giant spooge of "content", I have to just live with it, eh?
Remember what I said about designers who abuse a technology not making the technology fundamentally flawed? Where are your howls of protest about the gif standard?
the burden of proof is not on those making the argument that Flash is vile and tainted. That burden rests on the shoulders of those who assert that Flash is vital and useful and worthwhile.
Says who? You?
...every antisocial designer out there
My journal entry covers this beautifully. With you guys, it's personal.
Slashdot Mirror
Proprietary stuff better than an open content like a Wiki? Heresy! Mods, we have a /. heretic here!
I dunno. A lot of the great classics that we stand in awe of today were denounced when they were penned. Look at Ulysses for example, it was labelled a load of smut and banned in many countries, most notably in Ireland.
... and got rejected, I'd be very upset right now.
Just take your car on the train.
ISO shipping containers have been running on rails, roads, and in big ocean-going ships ever since containerisation.
"This isn't going to completely eliminate all spam overnight, therefore it's pointless." (Damn this karma stuff is easy to earn!)
See my journal.
[There. That should earn me some karma if the recent Flash flame war is anything to go by.]
Looks like the open-source fundamentalists have hit you with an 'over-rated' mod. Maybe we should start some sort of dissident pro Flash group on here and see what we can do about modding pro Flash posts with the points they deserve. What do you think?
Since ActionScript is only used in Flash but JavaScript is used elsewhere, I'm sure you'll agree that your analogy is complete baloney.
Your comment about non-functionality is way off. This Flash application is a hundred times more functional than any dozen-step HTML form submission process. The functionality of this thing lets you try different dates, different rooms and see the results of your decisions at a glance. I wouldn't even bother making the same sort of selections in a HTML form because I know I'd be sitting there looking out the window waiting for the subsequent pages to re-load every time I change a criterion.
BTW, the progress bar only appears once when the application has loaded. After that it goes like lightening.
Here is what the HTML and open-source fundamentalists on /. can't get into their heads. The web was designed using the metaphor of a page. This is fine if all you are doing is displaying pages of information. The web was not designed to be used as an application with lots of interaction with the user, and the more functional sites like Travelocity, Amazon, Expedia etc. have very clunky interfaces that are constrained by the fact that they must push application-level functionality into a page-based environment. It's like making edits to a Word document where you have to destroy the page and recreate it from scratch (waiting for it to load each time) every time you make an edit. Flash-based web applications allow application-level functionality to take place in a web browser. They combine the best of both worlds, the reach of the web and the functionality of the application.
Let me put it this way. Show me a HTML-based solution that can pack all that functionality into a single page without having to do a complete page reload at least once. And please, no lectures about DHTML and a squillion other combined technologies that can supposedly do the same thing. Nit-picking about the colours of scrollbars doesn't count.
You just don't get it, do you? Hint: Try to reserve a room.
Thanks for posting a blatent flamebait submission. Nothing like a good flame war to round off the day.
You can use a text editor to develop swf files too in the same way that you talk about developing svg, but the Flash authoring tool is a lot more powerful.
No, I do mean video.Absolutely right. I'm surprised my original post is still in positive numbers.