as usual i'm looking into and thinking about a new web site. i've fiddled with flash but have heard that flex is the next thing.
should i look at flash again or just go to flex?

maximize market penetration, minimize uncertainty, thus employ the conservative option

thanks. that's what i'll do then.

Well it would be dumb to use Air for a website since its meant to be used for desktop applications.

Flex is a "new" big thing, but that doesnt really mean its what you need for your site. Flex is basically just a way to make a big online application. (Photo sharing, online maps)

Flash is the most interactive and probably your best bet. You can make apps of course with it even though its not flex.

So i guess it all really depends what you want to do. But if youre going to make your site in flash or flex, you have to make good use of the technology or else youll just end up with another annoying flash website.

FLASH!

GORDON!

See, you beat me to the:

FLASH!!! AAAaaaaah!! savior of the universe!
FLASH!!! AAAaaaaah!! he'll save everyone of us!
FLASH!!! AAAaaaaah!! he's a miracle!
FLASH!!! AAAaaaaah!! king of the impossible!

Flex is effectively just an applications Framework for Flash. So you're asking a non-question.

Your best bet is neither though, do you really need the overhead of yet another application layer to effectively get your message across?

Theres nothign wrong with using flash for interactive websites if flash is used well.

He's for every one of us...
Stand for every one of us..
He'll save with a mighty hand every man every woman every child with a MIGHTY FLASH.

Actually there is. That's not to say that Flash doesn't have it's uses, but it is inherently a flawed option in terms of usability. The main reason is that Flash UI controls are non-standard - they don't use your operating system's widgets. A user of windows expects buttons to look like a windows button, a user of osx expects aqua buttons etc. So even if you don't go crazy with innovative new UI ideas, you're still adversely affecting UI.

There are certain types of UI that can only be done effectively on the web using Flash, the Digg labs pages have a few good examples. But there is a reason these are just UI demos rather than proper features of Digg - it takes much longer to learn how to use a unique UI than to learn how to use a standard UI.

I think we're having a slight miscommunication here. Are you saying that flash websites arent good because some of them dont respond to basic OS commands? (IE a lot of flash pages dont have deep linking)

Or are you saying that Flash websites arent good because they dont look like windows if youre on windows, and they dont look like OSX if youre on OSX.

both.

thanks. i guess it was a non-question now that i think about it.

i'd like to make a flash interface an option by clicking on that option.

The first one makes sense, although thats starting to change. I agree thats one of the major flaws of most flash websites, but from what I've heard/seen deep linking, double clicks, and other OS features are being implemented more.

The second reason... just sounds boring, but I hope im just misunderstanding you again. I really hope you're not suggesting that web pages should be themed to look like the OS they're running on.

And both are important to keep in mind, although if you put enough work into it, you can work around those issues.

However, I think there's a much more important matter here. What's your experience with Flash? A newbie at flash is not going to make an impressive flash site their first try. And unfortunately, people have come to have high standards for any flash sites.

You can pull off an equally impressive and "modern" website without the use of flash at all, using a bit of extra javascript and AJAX.



His second point is 100% applicable with the average PC user. Having done usability tests before, it's almost infuriating to watch a person just stare at the screen, completely lost. But it happens, a LOT.

Okay, but a button is a button. I understand usability, but just because it's flash doesn't mean that it's less likely to be a button. That's a design issue that can be found in html, flash, or even some fancy smancy ajax page.

I'm not saying that websites should look like an application, i'm saying that the appearance of the dozen or so standard operating system widgets like buttons, scrollbars and edit boxes shouldn't be overridden without very good reason. As far as I know Flash doesn't give you access to these and you have to draw them yourself or use the (very poor) ones that come with Flash/Flex.

You would also have to draw a different set of widgets for each different OS and then do some sort of OS sniffing (is it possible?) to decide which theme to use.

HTML has the correct styling for widgets by default which means you have to go out of your way to ruin UI.

Okay so it's a design issue. I understand what you mean then.

I think though that it doesn't really have to do with flash though. Submit buttons and edit boxes can be changed on an HTML page too.

Just as an example though (to prove I'm not omgz <3 flash):

This site looks kind of cool at first but i have no freaking idea how to use it:
http://www.nickad.com/

Whoops forgot to add:

I do understand what you're saying, but I think if a site is designed well a user should be able to understand what a scroll bar is and what it does. A submit button should have some feedback when it's pressed.

Just because a text field may look different in flash doesn't mean that a user wont know what it is. (unless like I said the site is horribly designed)

The point is that you can't make Flash controls look like the native controls without serious hackery. With HTML they start out looking like what they're supposed to look like, and I generally don't support styling them unless the advantage is obvious (like putting a search icon in the left of the search field on a website).

Ew, AJAX.

look at the gimp. nice free graphics manipulation app but the ui just sucks. i can't use it. then when what's his name came out with a ui that mimicked ps the gimp guys get pissed off. a common ui, even if it's os themed is very important to the average user and even some power users.

i'm just going to fool around with flash and if it looks like i have something i can use then i'll employ (for free) a friend to make it smooth.

Im still failing to see how a scroll bar in flash is so incredibly horrendous that nobody would ever be able to use it....

And if it's that bad, just code one yourself.

Dude, do you have a link to that UI?

i'll do a search for it. one of kevin rose's friends made it a couple of years ago and they've referred to it a couple of times on twit and call for help.
i'm at work but i'll search when i get home.

Sweet.

Flash components you mean? You're right, those are hard to theme for yourself...

But for the most part every just designs them to fit their own needs anyway. Also, I'll go back to my previous point: If a button looks like a button but it's in flash, why is that such a big deal?

For the purposes of a highly flashy portfolio site it doesn't matter too much, people expect the navigation to be quirky. Often though people use Flash specifically so they can define their own scrollbars and buttons and this is very bad UI.

Flex is even worse since it's designed from the outset to allow you to build complex applications that are supposed to look like programs yet they use the Flash UI components rather than the system ones, and the Flash ones are seriously sluggish.