Anyone else here think Adobe Flash is forged in the fiery furnace of pure evil? I've never known such a frustrating, unreasonable program! Weird things happen when you try to animate simple graphics, selecting keyframes is hit and miss, parts of my work disappear for no reason, I get strange glitches, it's temperamental, it's slow etc etc. It's horrible! :arge::banghead:

Just putting it out there. :ashamed::Kick_Can_

Flash was designed purely to make navigating sites absoluite hell.

Did you ever go to Rockstar's old site? That was the perfect example of flash-based design over content. It took about 5 minutes to load all the flash content, and then the front end was just a picture. to navigate to each section, first you had to find the active parts of the picture, then blindly click things until you got to the right place, as they pictures had absolutely nothing to do with the result they produced.

Someone needed to go on an HCI course there.

Never seen a flash website that is usable.

edit: Rockstar's GTA IV site is not much better

I used to do Flash work back when clients actually asked for it. I think they're all smart enough not to bother now, unless they have some complex custom interface they have to build.

Last version I used was 5, and the interface was still obviously geared towards making animations. Building (and maintaining!) applications in it was a complete nightmare.

don't bother with actionscript 3.0, they are for absolute computer geeks who see source code as porns.

actionscript 2.0 is fine.....if you are just trying to do a basic website.

for website that works (or intrigues me) this one is rather good.

http://www.leoburnett.ca/FLASH/

Quote from JJ72 :

don't bother with actionscript 3.0, they are for absolute computer geeks who see source code as porns.

actionscript 2.0 is fine.....if you are just trying to do a basic website.

for website that works (or intrigues me) this one is rather good.

http://www.leoburnett.ca/FLASH/

That resized my browser and is pretty difficult to find what you want. I prefer a functional not over cluttered and clean website anyday. I like websites that use all the screen real estate I offer them and I cannot stand websites that use the whole minute text you can't read for no reason almost as much as over use of flash.

Blame Macromedia first. Adobe just bought them out and never streamlined the Flash into their UI mentality.

I have endless hate for Adobe. My work consists mostly of suffering through their bloatware year after year. For the love of God I cannot understand couple of things:

1) Their European overpricing. No, I do not attend their lame seminars filled with noobs and neither use localized versions. Where are my discounts, Adobe, if you back your overpricing with those benefits?

2) You have dedicated programs for desktop publishing, image editing and illustration. Why you can't keep them separated, cut the half-assed cross-program features and instead enhance the workflow and interoperability between them?

3) The user interfaces. Having invested serious money in Creative Suites and upgrades over the years, in the name of sweet Satan, why the UI's are still very similar yet fundamentally and confusingly different what comes to same damn options, features and shortcut keys?

I actually like Flash

It's an easy to use tool for vector graphics, programming and animation. Sadly it's used way to often for layer ads, totally crap navigation and hardwaremurdering effects nobody actually needs. If used well for animations, tools, onlinegames etc i think its perfectly fine.

I am not at all keen on Flash...I dont mind Green Lantern sometimes, but JLA is a bit silly now

Personaly Flash is the best to clean my kitchen and bathroom with, the other's just dont compete









eerrm.....ohh look taxi for Mackie.

Quote from Electrik Kar :

Anyone else here think Adobe Flash is forged in the fiery furnace of pure evil? I've never known such a frustrating, unreasonable program! Weird things happen when you try to animate simple graphics, selecting keyframes is hit and miss, parts of my work disappear for no reason, I get strange glitches, it's temperamental, it's slow etc etc. It's horrible! :arge::banghead:

Just putting it out there. :ashamed::Kick_Can_

It's something I've avoided during my web dev "career" for as long as I possibly could. I hate the thing (combination of no-script and flashblock in Firefox helps immensely.. especially as most flash objects are now embedded in sites by means of javascript to get around IE's "security" of requiring to click the flash object before it'll do anything). So far I've been lucky in only needing to create a fading slideshow and a spinning "globe" of Sierra Leone for clients and some crappy font-replacement stuff for a design agency.

It breaks just about every "rule" of web design too and makes accessibility nothing more than a fantasy.

IMO, flash is nothing but a scum's^h^h^hmarketer's dream.

I "miss" seeing a fair bit of web content, especially gaming sites as very often now, they're flash-only layouts.. something I avoid like a dose of the clap.



Regards,

Ian

As far as making an actual navigable website goes, Flash is always a pain. Especially when a new version comes out and your old version is no longer good enough and needs updated and then you have no admin privs at work and blah blah bleh.

But for simple animations it's cool. I highly recommend checking out Tokyo Plastic for just plain style. They're a design company though. Some of their stuff is utterly bizarre, but looking at it from an animator's perspective you have to admire them.

As with Ian, I've tried to stay well away from it during my design career, and have so far succeeded.

We've just won a contract, which to be honest I wasn't very confident about at the start of the meeting. The client showed us a particular site which they really liked, and yep you guessed it, it was 100% flash based. However we proceeded to show and explain the flaws in the site usability, and how we could overcome these by completely scrapping the idea of flash, and using some other trickery, whilst maintaining navigability etc. They were duly impressed and gave us the job. And thus I shall continue my career without using flash

That isn't to say flash is completely useless, there are some very nice flash sites and designs, but 99% of the time it isn't needed.