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Old 06-24-2009, 06:14 AM   #2521
kacir
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Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sweetpea View Post
Where did you see this blinking flash? I just thought it was great because it didn't have that...
He did not talk about a "flash" as in flashing light or flashing text, he talked about the technology of presenting animations - that is flash as in "Adobe Flash" (formely known as "Macromedia Flash"). In order to see the content of the page that uses Flash you have to have installed "adobe flash player" - a plugin in your browser. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash

There are many people that dislike pages that include Flash for following reasons:
- Flash is mainly used for those EXTERMELY annoying animated banners, so uninstalling of disabling Flash plugin gets you much, much more pleasant view of the average page. There is even very popular plugin for Mozilla firefox that is called Flashblock
- Flash is proprietary technology, so there is no *recent*, well working player for Linux platform. For FreeBSD, for example, the only working version is quite old (and running under old Linux API)
- why should I install a client (Flash player) into my browser in order to see simple page that is offering, let us say, for example, a reading device and a bunch of books.
- Flash does not work on mobile platforms (PDAs, cellular phones, iPhone, various book reading devices that have rudimentary html support)
- flash prevents people with disabilities from using text to speech, or various magnification tricks.
- flash animations are often magnitude bigger (in kilobytes) than the rest of the page, so people using various mobile Internet solutions that are billed by the megabyte have no choice but to switch the Flash off.
- some people are not allowed to install software on the computer they are using for browsing (various corporate users) so they can not install flash plugin in their browser.

One [very unnecessary, VERY annoying, animated] flash banner on site like GoEZBook is tolerable, especially when you use "flash block plugin". The tragedy is, when menu or other components needed for site navigation are implemented using Flash and the site is unusable with:
- alternate operating systems
- alternate browsers
- mobile devices, readers
- offline browsers (site downloaders)
- software necessary for people with disabilities.

Flash should be used for games (like that "Barbie dress up" that my daughter loves) or interactive animations (like those on www.leatherman.com ).

If Astak really, really, insists on polluting their own page with an animated banner hawking the very product that the page is about, they should have used an animated gif image.

Last edited by kacir; 06-24-2009 at 06:18 AM.
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