Pro togs with Flash-based websites

[neo2810]

Same old agrument... Flash works, it's pretty if done well, and I reckon the same proportion of folk will overlook your site for being Flash than will walk past your shop door because it's bright yellow.... so what.
The web should be a SMALL proportion of your marketing strategy, designed to ADD to your advertising campaigns, not BE the campaign. Direct mail/newspaper/tv is where your main budget will be allocated. So what if 5% or 10% of web users don't like Flash, the hits and business you will get from the other 90% is a bonus.

 

[EdinburghGary]

Same old agrument... Flash works, it's pretty if done well, and I reckon the same proportion of folk will overlook your site for being Flash than will walk past your shop door because it's bright yellow.... so what.
The web should be a SMALL proportion of your marketing strategy, designed to ADD to your advertising campaigns, not BE the campaign. Direct mail/newspaper/tv is where your main budget will be allocated. So what if 5% or 10% of web users don't like Flash, the hits and business you will get from the other 90% is a bonus.

100% of my marketing strategy is online...

Gary.

 

[parish]

At one point you're going on about how people should be using avi instead of Flash for embedded movies, but then saying don't use Flash because of modem users. So you have to wait a bit for it to download. You do with avi, divx, xvid, etc. You had to wait for jpg's to download back in the day. If we can't use Flash, we can't use avi's either. I dunno but you're way of thinking essentially holds the web back by 10 years which is simply mad. Look at all the creativity that has arisen because of what Flash offers. Most recently Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long blog. Joss Whedon created a 42 minute 'tv' show without the need for tv. No network approval, no ad breaks. He made a show and it was a hit thanks to Flash. He probably could have used quicktime but its just so much easier these days with Flash. You know people have it. It *is* installed on XP, Vista and OSX with a fresh install. Any new computer has it. So that removes any what if questions. Simply publish your film. It was a huge success.
I get the feeling your the type of person that won't see a carrot when its put in front of them. You dismiss the stats, believe Adobe paid Youtube (which is hilarious since Google was also using Flash for video at the same time) and so-on. Fine, hate full flash sites and flash intros. But to dismiss the technology entirely is crazy. Its done some seriously great things for the modern web and creative industries.

Sorry Pete, I see what you mean - it's because the thread keeps going off at a tangent and people talk about things like YouTube whereas I'm talking about commercial sites, i.e. sites that are selling a product or service.

I'm not saying Flash as a technology is bad, it's the inappropriate use of it; Matty kind of hits the nail on the head when he says it makes it easy to create websites well so does Dreamweaver and that produces some horrible incompatible code (or it used to, maybe it's improved). the problem is that it makes everyone think they are a web designer yet know sod all about coding, get carried away and go completely OTT producing really crap sites.

If you have a site selling stuff then you should go for maximum compatibility. If you don't believe me, then take a look at the really successful online retailers, e.g. Dabs, eBuyer, Sainsburys, and eBay, do you see any Flash? Nope. What you do see is maximum cross-platform and cross-browser compatibility, consideration for the fact that some people are on slow connections (so only thumbnail pics on the pages with the option to click for a larger image), and the ability to get to where you want in just 3 or 4 mouse clicks (a recognized feature of good site design).

Now, if we're talking about personal websites then use whatever you like because it's no skin off your nose, and more importantly won't lose you any money if I, or a few others in this thread alone, can't/won't visit your site.

Sites like YouTube are a different matter because they are all about multimedia content so you know that they are going to consume a lot of bandwidth, but they would be better using some other format than Flash and yes, I agree AVI would be a bad choice as it is old hat and the compression algorithms are not as good as newer formats like WMV - and that will work out of the box on Windows and Linux (and probably Mac too?) without the need to install any codecs.

Don't think it is Pete. I've got a pretty much brand new install of Vista, fully updated and I can't see Raymonds site using IE7.

I checked my newly built XP machine at work and it does indeed install Flash, however it's only version 6 so what probably happens is the first time you visit a Flash site you get a pop-up saying you need to upgrade which I've probably taken to mean that Flash needs installing.

Same old agrument... Flash works, it's pretty if done well, and I reckon the same proportion of folk will overlook your site for being Flash than will walk past your shop door because it's bright yellow.... so what.
The web should be a SMALL proportion of your marketing strategy, designed to ADD to your advertising campaigns, not BE the campaign. Direct mail/newspaper/tv is where your main budget will be allocated. So what if 5% or 10% of web users don't like Flash, the hits and business you will get from the other 90% is a bonus.

100% of my marketing strategy is online...

Gary.

And it's also 100% of the marketing strategy for Dabs, eBuyer, eBay, etc. etc. and, as I mentioned above, they go for maximum compatibility.

 

[parish]

I think the days of companies blocking flash is fast coming to an end, its getting too widespread.

Hmm, I'm not so sure. I think most companies do it to stop staff using lots of bandwidth surfing YouTube. OK, so they could block specific sites, but with so many YouTube-like sites springing up all the time it would be hard to keep on top of so it's just easier to block by content type.

It ould be interesting to know whether it (blocking Flash) is on the increase or decrease

 

[purpleclouds]

And it's also 100% of the marketing strategy for Dabs, eBuyer, eBay, etc. etc. and, as I mentioned above, they go for maximum compatibility.

That's the difference here, these are huge corporations offering thousands of products, in a fully automated work flow, where updatability has to be quick and simple. Pro togs, I am guessing sell perhaps at best, a few photographs a day through their online galleries...and I'm also willing to guess that most then take payment through either paypal, cheque, cash on collection...a very tiny proportion will have proper credit card payment systems in place.

So why invest all the time and money in a database driven system with what is quite frankly mind boggling amounts of coding (to anyone but a web designer), when something that can be made automatically and in a matter of minutes will do just as good a job, and have some nifty interactivity too??

Photography is in the creative industry, and people expect creative websites from photographers....if I were to be confronted with an eBay styled site to view and purchase pictures from I'd be a little surprised!!

Edit - I've also never worked anywhere where flash or any interactive media has been blocked....

 

[parish]

That's the difference here, these are huge corporations offering thousands of products, in a fully automated work flow, where updatability has to be quick and simple. Pro togs, I am guessing sell perhaps at best, a few photographs a day through their online galleries...and I'm also willing to guess that most then take payment through either paypal, cheque, cash on collection...a very tiny proportion will have proper credit card payment systems in place.

I take your point about the difference between Dabs and a self-employed tog, but what will happen in the future? You only have to read the reports about our (as a nation) spending habits to see that online shopping is growing explosively - if not exponentially - not only in how much we spend but in the diversity of what we buy.

For several years now Google has been my first port of call for anything, in fact not long after I moved here I really fancied fish and chips one evening; I didn't even think about Yellow Pages or Thompson Local I went straight to Google and typed fish chips trowbridge - honestly.

As for pro togs, my daughter's b/f took part in a cross country run for charity. There was a pro tog taking pics of all the competitors, the following day they were up on his website where you could order online.

So why invest all the time and money in a database driven system with what is quite frankly mind boggling amounts of coding (to anyone but a web designer), when something that can be made automatically and in a matter of minutes will do just as good a job, and have some nifty interactivity too??

The thing is though, that just as there is Flash and Dreamweaver etc. for producing webpages so there is software to set up and run an online shop or ordering system without the need for any coding. Drupal, Mambo. Joomla! etc for content management and various s/w packages that link to them to do the ordering - if I ever get round to sorting my website out I'll be setting that up (I don't expect to get rich from it, but maybe there's a few people out there who might like to buy some of my pics). Oh, and I stumbled across a local photo printing company (along the lines of Photobox) who have a system whereby you install their s/w on your site, select the photos for sale, set the prices, and the orders go straight to them, they print and despatch them, and pay you the commission.

Photography is in the creative industry, and people expect creative websites from photographers....if I were to be confronted with an eBay styled site to view and purchase pictures from I'd be a little surprised!!

Again, fair comment, but equally there will be people out there who would appreciate an eBay-style site; it takes all sorts.

Edit - I've also never worked anywhere where flash or any interactive media has been blocked....

I've heard of a few, plus some that explicitly block sites like YouTube. It would be interesting to know some figures about this.