Regarding the scroller. The site was designed and built last year, and at the time Flash was the best option (for a couple of reasons). We never use Flash lightly - and I can’t remember the last time we did.
Having said that, from both a visual design and a user experience perspective the outcome of either a Flash or jQuery scroller of this kind is exactly the same. And overall the site is still standards compliant (validating to strict).
Use of Flash, in the successful and inconspicuous way it has been done in this site, should not affect evaluation of the design. It’s like evaluating the design based on whether the site was built in .Net, PHP or Ruby. In my opinion at least.
I have to disagree, from a user experience perspective the images are not available to the users, should they wish to email them or whatever, and there is significant work involved in getting them out of the flash movie. (screenshot) / photoshop. This may however have been the intended result for the client - protecting the images. I dare say it wont be long before you get an email or a phone call asking for them to be emailed because they can’t save them off the site - I’ve learnt the hard way with this sort of thing myself.
Don’t get me wrong - visually, the site is impressive, however without taking into account the implementation, we’d all be looking at websites as large Jpeg’s spat out of photoshop with hotspots.
Protecting the images was not the basis of the choice to use Flash for that component - you’ll note that in other areas of the site images are readily available.
Having said that I am not sure why people would want to downloading the images, or why from a user experience perspective they should be able to? The purpose of the site is not to supply photos to users, especially given that they are copyrighted images and the property of the various companies whose furniture is pictured in them and can only be used a redistributed with permission of the copyright holder.
Also, the site has been online since last December, and to date there has been no complaints about lack of availability for downloading images.
I agree, implementation is very important. The implementation of this site is professional and is web standards compliant. One element of the site uses Flash - in an appropriate way, and in a way that is visually and functionally exactly the same had it been done in javascript.
So what this really boils down to is Flash prejudice?
There are always different approaches available when building a site and whilst i’m not the worlds hugest advocate of Flash it does have it’s place as does Jquery too.
It’s kind of down to personal preference, building something like this with unobtrusive javascript would have presented challenges. You’d have little issue getting it to look like the site does now but to make it still look as good with javascript unavailable would involve more effort and would most likely involve some design compromises being made to suit the technology which is not always a good thing.
Ultimately design is subjective and different people will have different views as to what’s required. It doesn’t mean any of them are wrong; it’s just different people’s expectations being unique.
I have to say Paul’s scenario is kind of extreme though the sentiment is fair. It wouldn’t be hard for the customer to mention the Boardroom Image’s chairs for example. As always, different people will have different opinions.
I’m not a designer so I’m not going to comment on the design of the site, but I would tend to agree with Flash being a usability problem, for a number of reasons.
It does however have one main benefit - consistency across browsers and OSes. In saying that, you MUST have the flash plugin installed, which rules out iPhone browsing, but you can at least degrade gracefully to a static image or something (swfObject helps with this of course).
jQuery and the like take a lot of the donkey work out of creating a consistent cross-browser experience so the above mentioned benefit is diminishing.
More and more people are using flash as a font replacement technique (sIFR) to make sites look even more pretty, but again I’d prefer images and use CSS to hide the fact. Both are non-invasive, but one doesn’t require a plugin. Down side of the image is that the text is not selectable, but it’s usually for headers which are easy to re-type
When I’m browsing I have the noscript FF plugin on unless I know and trust the site. So the first thing I see on Flash based sites is a grayed out box where the flash object would be. The same is true for javascript so the jQuery stuff would break to - same rules apply, graceful degrading required, but more often than not, jQuery tools normally work passively with HTML and CSS that works without it anyway.
Getting the images off the site to me is not a major issue. If someone is that interested in a picture of something that the business sells or works with, they deserve a phone call follow up - it’s an opportunity to be more personable, which in my experience, is much more likely to lead to a sale.
There’s 1 thing annoying me about this site and it’s the fact that the AI logo doesn’t appear to be left aligned (even though it is). If the white circle, or light, was 10 pixels left that’d be the job.
the flash debate still rages on! im not sure what the stats are but shouldnt a larger percentage of users have the flash plug-in already installed in their browsers?
aside from a minority still clinging on to IE6, we shouldnt just keep assuming that people are still living in the dark ages and approach the use of flash with a worry that people wont see it?
personally im a huge fan of flash when used the right way. Im often far more impressed with the sites on the FWA than any other website showcase site. It provides a great tool for truly interactive experiences (see http://www.gettheglass.com/) which just isnt possible using jquery!
it all boils down to the best tool for the job. whether you love flash or hate it, we’re not in the business for making websites for ourselves, but for our clients so its about whats best for them, not our own personal gratification.
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Nice clean design,
I’d have given more thumbs up if t’was jquery scroll instead.
Thanks for voting.
Regarding the scroller. The site was designed and built last year, and at the time Flash was the best option (for a couple of reasons). We never use Flash lightly - and I can’t remember the last time we did.
Having said that, from both a visual design and a user experience perspective the outcome of either a Flash or jQuery scroller of this kind is exactly the same. And overall the site is still standards compliant (validating to strict).
Use of Flash, in the successful and inconspicuous way it has been done in this site, should not affect evaluation of the design. It’s like evaluating the design based on whether the site was built in .Net, PHP or Ruby. In my opinion at least.
I have to disagree, from a user experience perspective the images are not available to the users, should they wish to email them or whatever, and there is significant work involved in getting them out of the flash movie. (screenshot) / photoshop. This may however have been the intended result for the client - protecting the images. I dare say it wont be long before you get an email or a phone call asking for them to be emailed because they can’t save them off the site - I’ve learnt the hard way with this sort of thing myself.
Don’t get me wrong - visually, the site is impressive, however without taking into account the implementation, we’d all be looking at websites as large Jpeg’s spat out of photoshop with hotspots.
Hi Paul,
Protecting the images was not the basis of the choice to use Flash for that component - you’ll note that in other areas of the site images are readily available.
Having said that I am not sure why people would want to downloading the images, or why from a user experience perspective they should be able to? The purpose of the site is not to supply photos to users, especially given that they are copyrighted images and the property of the various companies whose furniture is pictured in them and can only be used a redistributed with permission of the copyright holder.
Also, the site has been online since last December, and to date there has been no complaints about lack of availability for downloading images.
I agree, implementation is very important. The implementation of this site is professional and is web standards compliant. One element of the site uses Flash - in an appropriate way, and in a way that is visually and functionally exactly the same had it been done in javascript.
So what this really boils down to is Flash prejudice?
My thoughts are that the primary audience for downloading of the images will be the client themselves. For sales staff or marketing.
Here’s a scenario…When it would make a difference..
Sales call “hello - I’ve seen one of your products on the website..etc..”
reply - “Which one?”
“Erm.. I can’t remember. I’ll email it to you.”
Click.
Visitor gone, unable to email the photo. Or phones back and says they can’t save the image.
But yes. Maybe I am flash prejudiced. For the above reasons.
There are always different approaches available when building a site and whilst i’m not the worlds hugest advocate of Flash it does have it’s place as does Jquery too.
It’s kind of down to personal preference, building something like this with unobtrusive javascript would have presented challenges. You’d have little issue getting it to look like the site does now but to make it still look as good with javascript unavailable would involve more effort and would most likely involve some design compromises being made to suit the technology which is not always a good thing.
Ultimately design is subjective and different people will have different views as to what’s required. It doesn’t mean any of them are wrong; it’s just different people’s expectations being unique.
I have to say Paul’s scenario is kind of extreme though the sentiment is fair. It wouldn’t be hard for the customer to mention the Boardroom Image’s chairs for example. As always, different people will have different opinions.
I’m not a designer so I’m not going to comment on the design of the site, but I would tend to agree with Flash being a usability problem, for a number of reasons.
It does however have one main benefit - consistency across browsers and OSes. In saying that, you MUST have the flash plugin installed, which rules out iPhone browsing, but you can at least degrade gracefully to a static image or something (swfObject helps with this of course).
jQuery and the like take a lot of the donkey work out of creating a consistent cross-browser experience so the above mentioned benefit is diminishing.
More and more people are using flash as a font replacement technique (sIFR) to make sites look even more pretty, but again I’d prefer images and use CSS to hide the fact. Both are non-invasive, but one doesn’t require a plugin. Down side of the image is that the text is not selectable, but it’s usually for headers which are easy to re-type
When I’m browsing I have the noscript FF plugin on unless I know and trust the site. So the first thing I see on Flash based sites is a grayed out box where the flash object would be. The same is true for javascript so the jQuery stuff would break to - same rules apply, graceful degrading required, but more often than not, jQuery tools normally work passively with HTML and CSS that works without it anyway.
Getting the images off the site to me is not a major issue. If someone is that interested in a picture of something that the business sells or works with, they deserve a phone call follow up - it’s an opportunity to be more personable, which in my experience, is much more likely to lead to a sale.
Just my 2p!
There’s 1 thing annoying me about this site and it’s the fact that the AI logo doesn’t appear to be left aligned (even though it is). If the white circle, or light, was 10 pixels left that’d be the job.
No comment on the Flash debate
Hi Lee,
The logo itself doesn’t start at the edge of the white circle, the 20 pixels or so of dark area to the left of the circle is also part of the logo.
As I’m sure you know, clients are pretty particular about having their logo represented exactly - so our hands were tied on this issue.
Thanks again for including us at your site
Thanks also to everyone who took the time to comment ont he design and implementation of the site.
@Leeanne: That’s what I suspected
the flash debate still rages on! im not sure what the stats are but shouldnt a larger percentage of users have the flash plug-in already installed in their browsers?
aside from a minority still clinging on to IE6, we shouldnt just keep assuming that people are still living in the dark ages and approach the use of flash with a worry that people wont see it?
personally im a huge fan of flash when used the right way. Im often far more impressed with the sites on the FWA than any other website showcase site. It provides a great tool for truly interactive experiences (see http://www.gettheglass.com/) which just isnt possible using jquery!
it all boils down to the best tool for the job. whether you love flash or hate it, we’re not in the business for making websites for ourselves, but for our clients so its about whats best for them, not our own personal gratification.