Apologies, all, that last message wasn't particularly constructive of me. I'll be more explicit here - my beefs with the use of Flash on anything to do with "education" (or anywhere else, for that matter) are as follows: 1. Adobe's Flash belongs only to Adobe - there is no Flash open standard like there is for all the other important technologies on the web. Eschewing open standards is poison on the web (although I don't have to tell that to this group). 2. Flash, as a tool, is technically impressive. It's the way that it's used by a naive market that sees it as a hammer, and every problem as a nail that raises issues. Our local "tech school" turns out hundreds of Flash-only designers every year that the market doesn't need. They have to go *somewhere* - so they tend to freelance and eek out an existence by selling Flash sites to even more naive customers. 3. Flash encourages designers to break web conventions by providing their own buttons, hidden or subtle scroll bars, and in every way "customising" a site's user interface. In doing this they negate all the learning that web users have done on every other (non Flash) site they've visited. I've visited plenty of Flash sites, the navigation for which probably made sense to the designers, but certainly didn't to me, and I suspect, every other user. 4. Flash navigation is not accessibility friendly, not SEO friendly, and not visible to people who... get this... don't use Flash. I use the handy Flashblocker extension in Firefox, so I can be aware of every instance of Flash on sites I visit.
In my opinion, the only thing worse for the web than Flash is Microsoft's also-ran juggernaut: Silverlight. Why not use the open standard of SVG, which is already natively supported (most of it, anyway) in Firefox and Webkit (Safari/Chrome)? The answer is simple: because Microsoft or Adobe can't control it. Kind regards, Dave On Sat, 2009-01-10 at 08:26 -0800, Alan C Whiteman wrote: > James and Matt --> Comments below. > ---- > Alan C. Whiteman > Visualis Web Design > http://visualis.us > (562) 305-2862 > ___________________ > > -- David Lane = Egressive Ltd = d...@egressive.com = m:+64 21 229 8147 p:+64 3 963 3733 = Linux: it just tastes better = nosoftwarepatents http://egressive.com ==== we only use open standards: http://w3.org Effusion Group Founding Member =========== http://effusiongroup.com ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: memberh...@webstandardsgroup.org *******************************************************************
