Posted by Mark Goodge on 10/05/07 20:45

On Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:35:11 -0700, Travis Newbury put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>On Oct 5, 9:42 am, SpaceGirl <nothespacegirls...@subhuman.net> wrote:
>
>> Very few web sites are just text. Even ones designed for mobile
>> platforms. Text-only sites are NOT good enough for most people. Fine
>> for machines (screen readers) and other inhuman devices, but for
>> emotional creatures like this, reams of unformatted text are... nasty,
>> uninteresting.
>
>I think it comes down to what you want to do with the web. If one
>uses the web for research and purchasing something then I can see
>where you might want to have a very vanilla mostly text kind of web.
>But if you like to have fun on the web, then you might want all the
>pizazz. the good thing about the latter is that both types of sites
>work for you.

Another thing to consider is that there are, essentially, two ways of
making money on the web: selling things directly to customers and
selling advertising. As you've already pointed out, people who buy
things tend to like simpler, more textually-based websites. And the
most profitable forms of advertising at the moment are the contextual
systems such as Google Adsense and Overture. These only work
effectively on text-based websites.

>I like pizazz

As a website operator, I like making money. I like making money more
than I like pizazz. So I'll stick with primarily textual sites.

That's not to say that Flash is never appropriate. Within an otherwise
text-based site, Flash is a good mechanism for delivering video
content and will often be the best choice for such purposes. Flash is
also the only serious player in town for interactive web-based games
that behave as if they were running on the client's own computer[1]
rather than accessed via the web. And the biggie loved of graphic
designers, the entirely Flash-based website, can even be appropriate
in cases where the sole purpose is to entertain or advertise, such as
the website of a movie or supporting an advertising campaign, and you
don't care about the fact that the site will never be an income
generator.

When done well, entirely Flash-based sites can be very impressive
indeed - all the pizazz you could ever want. But it's important to
remember that one of the reason these sites are impressive, and win
awards, is because they are a departure from the norm. They bear as
much relationship to everyday web design as my grandfather's prize
marrows do to supermarket greengroceries. Few things are more
impressive than an award-winning Flash-based website. But few things
are more ludicrous than an attempt to use those techniques on an
ecommerce operation. Anyone else remember the original boo.com?

[1] Well, actually, they are, that's how Flash works.

Mark
--
http://www.MotorwayServices.info - read and share comments and opinons
"Wherever life may take me, I know that it won't break me"

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