Talk about the future of ecommerce

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JPlush76
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Talk about the future of ecommerce

Post by JPlush76 »

This is a demo site using Flash Remoting

http://examples.macromedia.com/petmarke ... store.html

Seems like the future of web development to me. Takes boring forms out of the mix. What do you guys think about Flash Remoting?

Pros? Cons? Indifferent?
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phice
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Post by phice »

I love the idea. I wish computer stores did this, so it was fast and simple, not this waiting 20 seconds for each page to load.
JPlush76
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Post by JPlush76 »

I'm curous about downsides like browser compat. and search engine optimizing, if they are problems or not.

My beef with flash is that its always been just for show.
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Slippy
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Post by Slippy »

I think that using flash to drive media such as advertising, tutorials and demonstrations is definately the way are things are going in the future.

It is nice that flash can "inherit" a lot of the functionality that comes with PHP when you use that as your server side interface.

A serious downside to using a flash only site is that search engines can only rely on <META> tags and a few titles to gather information about the site. As we all know -- some engines ignore this altogether which can seriously hurt the companies chances.

Flash is quite compatible; although I have had a few instances (I also support a 4000 user domain) where the plugin had a corrupt DLL and installing it was next to imposible. Although it has only happened 2 times in 5 years -- these things do happen.

I recently wrote an article about choosing flash as a medium for your web site -- here is an excerpt:
What are the benefits of using Flash?

Flash is actually quite easy to learn and use. There is certainly no shortage of "flashers" (professional flash users) on the Internet.


Flash can communicate with databases. That's right! You can program your animation to log in to your web site and even capture user's reactions to various events that occur in your animation.


Flash is compatible and easy to install. All modern browsers support the flash plugin and most of them ship with the flash plugin already. For users that don't have the flash plugin installed, they can enjoy a simple one click installation that is fast, even over a dial up connection.


Flash is lightweight. One of the biggest concerns on the Internet is that web sites take too long to load. One of the reasons people stay away from animation on their web site is that it usually takes a long time to load. This is generally not the case with Flash. Flash uses vectors to keep the file sizes small. If it is used correctly, you can produce animations that are full of dynamic content without the burden of a slow download time.


Flash is programmable. Using a special language called Actionscript, Macromedia has enabled Flash to become more than just animation software. Actionscript allows developers to turn your above ordinary animation into an exciting interactive application. Uses of this technology include the ability to create games, dynamic presentations and much much more.
What are the downsides of using Flash?

Let's face it, Flash is pretty cool stuff. How could anybody not like it? You might be surprised at what you discover as you read on.

Flash can deter your customers. There are so many web sites on the Internet that use Flash animation, just because they can. If you are a media company or a marketing company; then flash might serve a special purpose for you. Most people that are browsing the Internet could care less about your "cool intro" animation. More often, surfers just want to get into your site and start interacting with the "real" content. It is not wise to make your user's wait because they might get bored and move on; leaving you with yet another lost customer.


Cool Flash animations can be HEAVY on bandwidth. Modern society puts a huge emphasis on new age media. You see it on all of the television channels, in movies and even in magazine advertisements. In order to produce a really cool animation that people will accept, you might have to utilize techniques that will greatly increase the size of your animation. A good example of this can be found at DerBauer (Check out their "Teasers and Trailers" section under the "works" button on the main page to see what we mean - I hope you have a killer connection). We agree that this site has some pretty cool animation; but it also takes "forever" to load.


Flash animation can be expensive to produce. Although there are many companies capable of producing flash animation on the Internet, you will quickly find that producing a top quality animation requires a fair amount of investment. This is because creating animations is a time consuming task (just ask Disney!).


Flash web sites can be difficult to update. A completely flash based web site can be very difficult to maintain, since adding and modifying content can result in many hours of work editing and modifying the animation so that it can incorporate new changes. And of course, modifying flash animation also requires the skills of a flash animator (preferably a skilled one).
Heh - sorry for the length.. copy and paste is just so darned easy... :)
JPlush76
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Post by JPlush76 »

hey slippy, thanks for the good info.

You've explained alot of the reasons I took my learning from flash to php. I found people just want the content ASAP.

Before I got to my current company they had a designer make them a flash intro page, where they could select from 3 different parts to our site.

People HATE it. They always say, just give me the site now. The CEO held firm on keeping it though so I couldn't really do anything.
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Slippy
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Post by Slippy »

I guess it all boils down to quality vs quantity. Although when used properly (like the example you included at the begining of the post) it is seriously effective.

Large corporate sites like Pepsi, Coke and Sony all use flash to market their products. But I don't think any of them are using flash to handle the e-commerce side of things...
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