SOME RANDOM DUDE

I spend a large majority of my work day working with or designing for Flash-based interfaces. Flash is essentially how I make a living on a daily basis. That said, there are many personal/philosophical issues I have with Flash on the web that I struggle with everyday I work with it. Flash has almost always been a divisive technology for the web community. Most people fall in either the love or hate camps with few not holding a strong opinion about it. I am planning to go into my thoughts about Flash - my likes, my dislikes and everything in between later this week. But first, I wanted to hear what your frustrations are with the experience of Flash on the web. Your thoughts can hit any subject - vague to specific. I just want to hear from the people whose opinions are the most important, the users.

Recently I posed the question to myself of how many sites I visit on a daily basis that use Flash. When I really thought about it, the answer really shocked me. I would love to hear if my personal experience mimics yours.

Your comments are going to greatly impact how I direct my article, so please lend me your thoughts.

Update: - You can now read what annoys me about Flash.adobe flash, flash, flex, web design web development

I am away from the city this weekend, so I did not get to do any “blog chores” this weekend. I will have a long stretch next weekend and an even longer stretch in about three months or so. Until then…

Enjoy the links.

(more…)3d, 3rd world, actionscript, application, architects, art, att, beta, bill oreilly, bloxorz, boulder high, browser, bush administration, car, chains, China, christianity, claraty, color, color inspiration, complaints, congresss, corporations, corruption, crash, css, cssvista, dance craze, democrats, design process, dick cheney, dsl, energy bill, europe, fcc, flash, Fox News, framework, gas mileage, german crash test, government, GUI, healthcare, iraq, job, kde, links, linux, Mac, masters of painting, media, michael moore, mileage standards, movies, nasa, nature, net neutrality, news, operating system, painting, philosophy of history, Photography, pirates, politics, posters, religion, right wing christianity, robotics, safari, safari beta, secrecy, senate, sicko, sphere, subliminal messages, teenagers, telecoms, torrents, transformers, tree, tree drawings, war, warez, web, web designers, web development, weekly Windows

I know, it is shocking - I actually posted the weekly links on time. We are heading out for the weekend (again) and I am not going to be graced with an internet connection, so I wanted to make sure to post these links before I headed out. Enjoy your beautiful internet connection by surfing through these links while I lie in the fetal position, sobbing like a baby that I am without my DSL connection. See you all next week.

Enjoy the links.

(more…)2 dollar bill, 3 year old brother, address book, ads, AJAX, ajaxdaddy, anime character, apple outlet, application, best buy, bush administration, cadillac, cellphone, censorship, charts, class, congress, copywriting, data360, diagrams, digital rights management, DRM, electric car, enhanced interrogation, ferrari, free republic, google maps, graphics editor, graphs, headlines, html, iraq war, javascript, laws, lightsabers, links, melted keyboard, Mickey Mouse, nazi, neocons, news, online advertisements, os x, pixelmator, plugin, png, politics, race, rudy giuliani, senators, sorted books project, spam, spammer, squirrels, tablekit, torture, transparency, universal wireless repeater, visitor logs, war, web development, weekly white house

It was another tough week personally - I apologize for the late post. My hope is things will be better from now, but there’s a chance that it is going to get significantly worse. Unfortunately I had to hold off on a lot of new pieces of design for the site - there simply is just not enough time and it is extremely low on the priority list right now.

Once again, my apologies, life is not exactly peachy right now.

Enjoy the links.

(more…)abortion, art, artfock, attorneys, beach impeach, bill kristol, bomb, bush approval rating, carbon offset, coda, daily show, dance dance revolution, ddr, diebold, DIY, dow jones, dreamhost, dungeons and dragons, election, fear of girls, first couple, fuente, george bush, green, ied, iraq, john mccain, laura bush, links, mac software, murtha, ohio audit, photoblog themes, politics, president, second great depression, sell art, soldiers, spider car, street installations, terrorism, voting, war, water, web development, weekly wordpress theme generator

Through a fairly heated debate on standards I ran across a very nice write-up on how to integrate Flash elements in a site with maximum accessibility, backward compatibility and standards in mind. Called FAUST (Flash Augmenting Standards), this method ensures media/data will be accessible no matter how far down the technology chain you go. The example on the site shows how absolutely beautiful this is for the end-user. Flash developers and front-end developers should sit down together and read this side-by-side.

I have made very clear my opinion on anti-flash standardistas. That being said, I have a deep respect for web accessibility/standards and feel it is a high priority to make Flash as web-friendly as possible. A lot of work has been done towards this end and FAUST seems to be an attempt to put all the fragmented pieces together in one cohesive package. I really applaud this sort of work as it is all too infrequent but highly important. With media consumption on the web growing, Flash is almost assuredly going to become even more integral a part of the web. These sorts of methods are going to make the process just that much nicer for the end user. Major kudos.

del.icio.us linkaccessibility, daily, delicious, faust, flash, html, link, media, standardistas, standards, web web development