Ahhhhh, but....
You can use Flash without all the fancy things.
You can create a simple page with a simple form that:
looks exactly the same regardless of the browser, fonts, styles, etc.
has antialiased characters in both the labels and in the fields, themselves
improves the user interface
outperforms a standard form (less bandwidth, faster response)
The latter is very important for a "nice but fast presentation of useful data".
Here's a simple example of what I mean:
With CF you display a simple blank form to retrieve/edit an employee record:
Employee_ID _____________________ [Submit]
Last_Name _____________________
First_Name _____________________
Phone _____________________
.
.
.
Now you enter an employee ID and hit submit.
what normally happens is this:
1) the form fields are submitted to your CF program in Name/Value Pairs
(e.g. Employee_ID=12345)
2) Your CF program gets the info from the form and does a query and
retrieves the data.
3) Your CF program formats am entirely new copy of the form with the data
fields filled in
4) You send this back to the browser
5) The browser's screen goes blank
6) The entire form and contents are redrawn
Now, let's do the same thing with Flash.
The blank form looks the same, except it is defined in flash and is
probably smaller than the equivalent html form.
When you enter an ID and submit, steps 1 and 2 are exactly the same
But here is where things get a little different:
The Flash file which submitted the data is looking for a response in the
format of Name/Value pairs
3) Your program only formats the Name/Value pairs, not the entire form
4) The Name/Value pairs (only) are sent back to the browser Flash plugin
5) the screen does *not* go blank
6) The Values in the Name/Value pairs replace the contents of the form
fields (the entire form is *not* redrawn)
The reduction in bandwidth is significant.
Response time is greatly improved.
The visitor doesn't stare at a blank or partially redrawn screen
Dick
At 8:16 PM -0800 1/16/01, Allan Pichler wrote:
>Flash is all good .... for fancy presentations. But that's not where the
>majority of inet use is. It's still about making nice but fast presentation
>of useful data.
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