I was looking at the website of a local design agency the other day. I've worked with them in the past creating a few small sites. Their previous website was quite a nice, quirky html site that I thought served them well. Now, they've moved to a 100% flash site for some reason. It's a mystery to me, because they have some full-time web developers working there. I can only assume that the marketeers there saw that they could have lots of motion and thought that would be a good idea.
It reminded me of an old chestnut that needs re-hashing: don't break the back button.
You may wonder why, if you include something similar within a Flash movie, you should not break the browser's back button.
It's a question of trust. Users vary significantly in their confidence when it comes to using a web browser. Part of the "deal" they have going is the consistent "language" they use to communicate with it. If you do something ninety-nine times and each time get a consistent result, then changing that on the hundredth attempt is like jumping out from behind a bush shouting "boo!" The expectation the user has — rightly — is that hitting the back button will take them to the state the screen was previously in. They don't care whether that's embedded in an object and not a separate URL. I'm with them on this: it's incredibly annoying to progress through several screens of a flash site, hit the browser "back" button and then be booted out back to a completely different site.
So don't do it. If you must have a completely Flash-based site, then do it sensibly. There are several utilities out there for this. You could use SWFObject combined with SWF Address, but there are others.
Technorati: Usability
Labels: Usability
Jason posted this on Monday, May 21, 2007 at 5:56 pm.
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Eric Meyer has a good post on his blog, about the hoplessness of stylesheets and forms. Have a read if you're inclined.
Technorati: css web-development
Labels: css, Web-development
Jason posted this on Thursday, May 17, 2007 at 5:28 pm.
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The Metaverse is already forming, we all know that. Whether it germinates from the seed of a an MMORPG (like World of Wartcraft) or Second life, we don't know. But in some sort of crazy-but-could-be-brilliant move, IBM and Sun are creating virtual spaces for their employees to collaborate in.
Sun's uses a custom system running on their intranet. IBM's is more interesting: they have a private island in Second Life, inaccessible to non-IBM employees. Why more interesting? Because although restricted access, it still exists is a "public" space, almost mirroring the real world.
At first I though "what's the point," but now I've come round to the idea that it could be really useful to use the virtual boardroom model. You could chance upon other people, talk to people aside from the main meeting informally, and do many of the things you can do when you're at the real boardroom. The trouble with the Metaverse though, is that the food's rubbish.
Technorati: Metaverse
Labels: Off-topic
Jason posted this at 9:26 am.
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Screen Edit has a great post about the buzz around Silverlight at Mix 07. From what I understand that buzz carries on within Microsoft itself; many people who worked at Macromedia before the merger with Adobe (such as Jon Harris) have now ended up there and so consequently that has had an effect on the vibe there.
I'm going to dig a little deeper into this Silverlight thing. It could be interesting.
Technorati: Silverlight
Labels: silverlight
Jason posted this on Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 10:21 am.
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Here it comes again. Flash on the Beach 2007. Last year, it was a great event, as you will have read here or elsewhere on the web. They're going to have to do a lot to live up to that, but I think they can do it. What with the addition of fireworks. No, not the Adobe software type, but the real ones. You see, this year one of the event days is Guy Fawke's night. Cool!
Technorati: FOTB, fotb07
Labels: Events
Jason posted this on Wednesday, May 09, 2007 at 12:35 pm.
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"Lovely," is what I thought when I saw Moo.com. Ok, so it's just the website of a printing firm - and one that offers only two very restricted product lines. All that is fact, but it seems so much more than that. Have they cracked the secret of creating a great brand? It would seem so.
There offering consists of two products: mini cards (only 70mm x 28mm) and note cards (100mm x 100mm). I'm afraid all you history buffs will have to look up the corresponding inch count all by yourselves.
What's the secret? Well, perhaps part of the secret is in the simplicity of the offering. They offer only the two lines at the moment. They plan to do more, I think, but I doubt they will stray too far from a small simple selection. Another part of the appeal is that unlike many printers, one simply buys the cards in packs of 100. No set-up costs, no extras other than the postage. That means that although the per-card price is not cheap, the price of a run is low at £9.99 ($19.99 US). Which makes it something people can play around with. The simplicity is carried on in the design of the card: one side is for text. You can choose from a very small selection of about ten colours, and put up to five lines of copy on there, with an icon if you choose.
The real magic though, and the bit I have been saving until last is the picture side of the card. On that side, you can put a photograph. But that's not all: you can log into your Flickr account through the Moo site and select up to one hundred different photos to go on your cards! That's right, you can have each of your one hundred cards display a different photo. Amazing.
I was dead keen, and coincidentally needed some business cards, so I got together some images I had taken during the previous year on holiday and out and about (Taipei, Mallorca, London zoo and Watford). Cropping them down to fit the cards is something you can do on the Moo site, but in this case I decided to do it myself, adding a white bar at the top where I put my logo. I uploaded them to Flickr and did the magic on Moo.
When they dropped through the letterbox, I was well pleased! They are small but perfectly formed, and have a nice matt laminated finish on them.
Technorati: Business
Labels: business
Jason posted this on Tuesday, May 08, 2007 at 5:27 pm.
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I've just been invited by Adobe to Adobe Live 2007. I've signed up for both days and the developer day, too. Should be interesting, if only to see what others have done so far with CS3. Also I'll be hanging around the book stands, keeping an eye out for Essential ActionScript 3.0
by Colin Moock. I've got ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide
and Essential ActionScript 2.0
and both are great books. Unfortunately, I think the event is just that bit too early, and the book won't be available.
Something else I'm looking forward to is handing out my new business cards. They are the lovely mini cards from Moo.com. Beautiful! If you see me there, be sure to ask for one!
Technorati: flash Adobe Live 07 Adobe events
N.B. The book lnks above are affiliate links
Labels: Events
Jason posted this on Friday, May 04, 2007 at 10:45 am.
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