Richard Jones' Log: Flash rant

Tue, 05 Oct 2004

We've got some Flash design guy in the office throwing around the same old ideas about how to Make The Web Better. At the moment, this involves all the usual crap: mini frames embedded in the window that can't display any reasonable amount of information, whirling-and-spinning dynamic 3-D nagivation trees that zoom and whirl and consist entirely of spheres connected by lines with no semantic information whatsoever and the user's supposed to just guess what each sphere is, and where the information they want is.

One of the onlookers remarked that people would learn to navigate the site just like they do streets. Sure, if streets had no names or visible landmarks.

</rant>

Comment by Alan Green on Tue, 05 Oct 2004

Reminds me of the slogan on our local bowling alley, "Where everybody has a ball."

Comment by Chui on Tue, 05 Oct 2004

Remember the Sly movie where everyone's expected to know how to use the three shells in the toilet? Who knows, one day these spinnings balls are going to be second nature. ;)

Comment by Paul Boddie on Tue, 05 Oct 2004

At least there'll be the machine on the wall printing out tickets.

All this sounds very late 90s, so I have to ask: is the designer wearing a black polar-neck sweater?

Comment by tom on Tue, 05 Oct 2004

the worst thing is when your competitor's website gets 'flashified' and then some people get all worried and start thinking that your site needs all the style over substance too.

and then the argument arises that flash has supposedly been improved in terms of database interoptibility and dynamic content...although, by it's very nature, flash represents an extra layer in terms of server-side scripting.

when will the web return to being the web - ie: a primarily text-based medium of exchanging information ?!