Unfortunately, There are a ton of Flash web sites, that are either media centric, cartoon centric, or game centric, and there is a dearth of business/commerce centric Flash sites.
Referring a potential commercial client to the Macromedia.com or many of the other "sample" Flash sites, which are full of slow loading, multiple popup windows, and other absolutely useless functionality, while noisy and show pretty animations and colors, will surely turn most of them completely off. There have been a very few (unfortunately) Web sites that use flash as an adjunct to conventional commercial development languages, such as CFMX, CF 5.0, PHP or even ASP can do much more IMHO, in creating a user friendly, well designed, bandwidth conservative, presentation of the business entity, including our by-words; "Dynamic data-driven web application" The competition is on for the most eye-catching presentation of the business "face" done with the mission of bringing the client back often. I believe all of the software publishers are throwing marketing (name-your-currency-here) to try to corner the market where the big bucks are. Be it .NET, ASP, ASPX, CF, CFMX, PHP, and others. A web developer must keep in mind that all of these are tools to get the job done. The focus should be on doing the job and meeting the customer's needs. Managers, frequently either fall for the marketing hype, or will choose a technology based on the in-house skillsets. I can quote example after example of businesses that have wasted a tremendous amount of development money in trying to develop in, or convert to a particular technology, just because it seemed to be the "in" thing to do at the time, and was getting quite a bit of attention in articles written in the various "free" trade publications., whose focus changes from issue to issue. The practice of management dictating the technology before development starts, is, in most cases, a costly, very costly mistake, and not only hurts the bottom line, but wastes developer resources. The previous sentence, I believe, is probably the greatest contributor to developer unhappiness with his job, and also contributes to developers moving from job to job. Two very large scale operations come to mind, but I will not name names here. In one, the IT manager dictated three years ago a complete switch from a ColdFusion data driven web site, which included a high volume order entry and shopping cart, to pure Java. They had a twenty developer ColdFusion developer team, 18 of which have since left the company, and the new technology has not yet been fully implemented. The two remaining CF coders, are kept busy with updates on the existing site, but literally thousands upon thousands of dollars have been thrown down a empty hole with little or no progress, mainly due to the moving target of the adopted technology. The other made a deal with Oracle for enterprise licensing, and the attending Java hype, and is spending millions to convert a Hodge-podge of database programs that previously worked well, but were not integrated, and a blind insistence on writing all applications in pure Java, which we all recognize is still a moving target. As a Macromedia User group manager, I have been exposed from among our membership, all of the above. We have a wide diversity of developer and management types among our membership. There are some really atrociously designed web sites that, while full of eye candy, are really short on functionality. There are some web sites that function fairly well, but are poorly organized and suffer from design effort. Even fewer are the web sites that bring together both design and functionality. Each of us have that area in which we excel, and that is a good thing, but all of us must widen our skills to at least have a working knowledge of each technology, as it applied to the project(s) in hand. We must remain focused on the solution to the customer's needs and wants, and should integrate their input every step of the way. Bottom, line, as one who is intimate with several technologies, and centered on ColdFusion, I am still convinced, that while Flash has a niche place in enterprise development, it is not the complete answer, and as CF install, documentation and performance issues continue to be addressed, and the Red Sky beta becomes a release, developers will come to recognize that CF is a very reasonable and efficient alternative to these much-hyped new technologies. It takes less lines of code to produce results than any of the other languages and is considered by many a standard for Rapid Application Development (RAD) What is wrong with the KISS methodology? (Keep It Simple, Stupid) I will stop here as I think I have gone over my 0.02 worth. feel free to add or comment. ====================================== Stop spam on your domain, use our gateway! For hosting solutions http://www.clickdoug.com ISP rated: http://www.forta.com/cf/isp/isp.cfm?isp_id=772 ====================================== If you are not satisfied with my service, my job isn't done! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lofback, Chris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "CF-Talk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 10:07 AM Subject: RE: Is Flash really THAT good? | > However, with a thread like this, it makes me think that you | > are like the others who bitch about flash yet haven't seen | > any flash movies worth while. Here are a few flash sites | > that I consider to be worth your viewing. | > | > http://www.2advanced.com/flashindex.htm | > | > http://www.egomedia.com | > | > http://www.estudio.com | > | > just about any flash site on http://www.cwd.dk | > | > http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html (had to throw this | > is for the humor) | > | > Just to name a few. | | Well, call me old school, but I find these sites annoying and difficult to use. It is my firm opinion that the vast majority of web users do not care for this stuff. It is meant to impress developers, techies and managers but it is hopelessly unfriendly to the majority of users who simply want to accomplish a task on a site. They do not want to wait for these gee-whiz animations to load or to figure out which widget does what--they just want to get what they are there for, and making them wait while your site goes into these gyrations is just bad business. Who wants aggravated customers? | | Customer service always wins over gimmicks. On the web, "speed and usability" = good customer service, "splash pages and non-standard navigation" = bad service. | | This is going to be hotly denounced by those who love the bleeding edge, but plain HTML (black text, white BG, blue links, no fancy DHTML) is almost always the best choice to let the user get what they want fast. Unless your product IS multimedia-based, or you are using Flash (or any other plugin/gizmo) to make your service easier/faster to use or to provide some vital capabilities--like enhanced form validation/processing--I wouldn't use it. For whom do we develop our web apps? The developers or the users? If you are an online business, you'd better think about it! Look at Yahoo and Google. It's no coincidence that they are successful and they both use simple designs. | | http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ | | OK, Flame on! :) | | Chris | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Your ad could be here. Monies from ads go to support these lists and provide more resources for the community. http://www.fusionauthority.com/ads.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
