[TriLUG] OT: Flash web developers?

[Cristóbal Palmer]

Here are some designers in the RDU area:

http://sortfolio.com/chapel-hill-nc/3000-under
http://sortfolio.com/durham-nc/3000-to-10000
http://sortfolio.com/raleigh-nc/3000-under
http://sortfolio.com/raleigh-durham-nc/3000-under

Commentary below.

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 8:47 PM, John Brier <johnbrier at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, a friend of a friend wants a web site (mostly static content
> AFAIK), I think for a vineyard business that is built using Flash.

I want to preface this with a couple of disclaimers. One: I don't want
to try to talk him out of using flash. If he has good design reasons
for wanting flash content, then so be it. Two: I'm not make a pitch
for myself or anyone I do business with. I'd love to help him with his
site, but I've got a Masters Paper to finish.

There are several things that flash-based sites sometimes get wrong
that I hope he'll avoid:

1) No deep linking and/or inability to copy/paste. I find an awesome
wine that I want to tell my friends about, or an event at his
vineyard, and I have trouble conveying this to my friends on
facebook/twitter/whatever because all I can do is link to the front
page, which forces people to go through a 1-minute flash intro with
sound... [0]
2) 1-minute flash intros with sound. I know you (as an entrepreneur,
business owner, etc.) really have a singular vision of your business
and want to convey it to the public just so, but recognize that if you
don't meet people on their terms, you're likely to scare a lot of them
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? [1]
3) Google has improved their ability to look into flash sites and
index important content, but it's still not as good as what you'll get
with a fully standards-compliant website and some good white-hat SEO.
4) Analytics fail. Much of the navigation on many flash sites happens
within a flash object, and you get no analytics about what's happening
in there. If you use a standards-compliant setup you can throw in
google analytics or any number of other products and get some rich
information about how your site is succeeding--or failing.
5) Flash /only/ with no other content. Web-savvy users like me have
software that blocks flash from new domains in order to avoid
CPU-eating animated ads. How am I supposed to trust that your flash
app is worth enabling if your site gives me nothing but a flash app?
What happens on a slow connection or an old machine? Did that get
tested?
6) How do you update? If you were to get a designer to provide you
with an off-the-shelf CMS (eg. drupal, wordpress) with a few plugins
and a custom skin, you'd be able to provide fresh content yourself
continually, but with flash you either have to have special software
to update/add content or pay someone to do that. Your friend may think
he just wants completely static content, but if he's in small
business, I promise he'll want to update or change something within
six months of the site going live.
7) What about the blind? Is your flash-based site Section 508 compliant?

With some cursory searching you can find plenty more pitfalls of
depending wholly on flash.

There are sites that have a lot of great flash content that don't make
any of the above mistakes, so again: I'm not trying to talk him out of
using flash. What I am trying to say is this: find a designer who does
complete websites, not just somebody who can whip together a flash
object. Furthermore, once he has picked a budget and gone through an
intake interview and decided for himself, "Yes, I like this designer
and want to work with her/him," then he should not push for specific
technologies like flash. Trust the designer. You're paying a
professional for a reason. Ask questions, sure, but trust that the
designer has expertise in making great sites, and that's what you're
paying for.

Cheers,
-- 
Cristóbal M. Palmer
ibiblio.org systems
cdla.unc.edu research assistant

[0] the long tail is really key here. We get a ton of main page hits
at ibiblio.org, but they're absolutely dwarfed by the traffic to all
sorts of non-front pages, and many of them come in through forms of
sharing--eg. facebook--we could not have anticipated would be a major
factor back when the pages were designed (often 5+ years ago).
[1] This only seems to work in the niche of food service that shovels
people through as quickly as possible.