[TriLUG] OT: Flash web developers?

[Glenn Hennessee]

And, as I think Cristobal pointed out, Flash has huge problems with 
accessibility for the handicapped. A vendor can be sued if his/her site 
is not accessible. Target is a case in point -- it cost them $6 million 
to settle a lawsuit with the National Federation of the Blind. An 
American company with no physical presence in England has been charged 
under British law with not making their web site accessible. [If anyone 
has more details on that please let me know, my searches have only 
turned up a mention of it with no details.] Personally I despise Flash 
intros, particularly if they don't give you a way to bypass them. 
They're cute the first time you see them, maybe, but almost never a 
second time. Sites that are all flash are particularly bad and I will 
look somewhere else.
glenn


Matt wrote:
> Just to add $.02 to this.  It is unfortunate, but true that Flash has
> been over used and abused by too many developers  In response to the
> annoyance, one of the things that I keep installed in the browser is
> flash block.  Mostly this is to avoid all the animated ads that suck up
> bandwidth and are visually annoying.  The side effect is that legitimate
> flash, such as what your customer wants get thrown out with it.  While
> the blocker is supposed to allow you to easily turn a particular frame
> on, it doesn't seem to work really well.  The net result is that I can't
> effectively use flash based sites.  if I REALLY, and I mean REALLY want
> what is on that particular site I will go to the trouble to disable the
> flash blocker, but better than 9 times out of 10, I just go somewhere
> else.
>
> If your customer decides to use flash, be sure that they don't render
> the site useless to someone who chooses to not accept it.
>
> On Tue, 2010-05-04 at 23:55 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>
>   
>> On Tuesday 04 May 2010 22:06:49 Peter Neilson wrote:
>>     
>>> Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
>>>       
>>>> off. There's a sizable chunk of the population not annoyed by
>>>> flamboyant intros. There's another sizable chunk that are. Think of it
>>>> this way: do you enjoy businesses where the service staff sing a ditty
>>>> every time somebody walks in? Do you know people who find that
>>>> annoying?
>>>>         
>>> I am more or less equally annoyed by:
>>> 1) Up-front Flash.
>>> 2) Drive-up hamburger joints that greet me with "Wlcm-to-Brgrclown-wld
>>> you like to try the special mbrfbgr pszmffblt with the bzmmtfb sauce
>>> today?" (All I wanted, if they would let me speak, was to order a double
>>> cheeseburger, and I particularly didn't want to parse mbrfbgr pszmffblt.)
>>> 3) Companies with complicated and mandated phone-answering scripts not
>>> unlike the Burger Clown, where they could have said simply, "Good
>>> morning. Jones Printing Company."
>>>
>>> The would-be Flasher needs to run tests on his own customers. I'll bet
>>> he's seen a competitor's Flash website and wants the same, without
>>> giving any thought to the effect on business, if any. Perhaps he should
>>> wait until the successor product, Flush, is developed that can pour
>>> actual wine samples over the Internet.
>>>       
>> Well said!
>>
>> SteveT
>>
>> Steve Litt
>> Recession Relief Package
>> http://www.recession-relief.US
>> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
>>
>>     
>
>
>   

-- 
Glenn Hennessee
Department of Chemistry
NC State University
Raleigh, NC 27606
Voice: (919) 515-2947 FAX: (919) 515-8909
Email: Glenn_Hennessee at ncsu.edu