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Cake and eat it too

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 1:28 am
by alex.barylski
The sites I typically build are fairly Flash intensive, as I love the way things look when animated as do customers, however more and more compliance is becoming important to me as is SEO, cross-browser support, etc...

What I'd like to know, is how do I allow my web sites to have copious amounts of Flash and band, but degrade nicely in browsers which may not support all the bells and whistles, like those on PDA, etc...

I don't mean javascript stuff, but XHTML/CSS in general...

How can I achieve the best of both worlds?

I will take side with Flash always, as most people are capable of viewing it's content...but I figure there must be a way to meet non-supporting browsers at least half way...like perhaps a I can configure my CMS to use a different template when someone visits my web site using a browser which doesn't support Flash or Images???

Any ideas or suggestions on how to have my cake and eat it too??? :P

Cheers :)

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 2:33 am
by John Cartwright
It's actually quite simple, offer a non-flash version with all your content. That's just about the minimum you should have, although these replacement sites are really just for search engines crawling, and arn't really suitable for people (like me) that don't like flash and choose not to have it installed.

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 2:40 am
by Oren
Yeah, I don't like Flash sites at all. They are annoying - back button won't work for example, you have to wait it to load too much time and so on...

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 3:47 am
by wtf
I'd say start ditching flash. With this new copyright crap media won't be able to play unless activated (clicked on) by user rendering all your eye candy worthless. Yes, there are workarounds...

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 5:06 am
by timvw
Yet another 'i don't like flashturbation comment...

The WWW was all about content being available for everyone.. I still think that using a propriatary format results in exactly the opposite. In essence i want 'good information' and looking at animations only slows my down on my quest to get that information. Today i'm always surprised that webmasters do have the time for extra's like flash and javascript but they fail to generate accessible (x)html... Not a good thing.

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 6:14 am
by Oren
timvw wrote:In essence i want 'good information' and looking at animations only slows my down on my quest to get that information. Today i'm always surprised that webmasters do have the time for extra's like flash and javascript but they fail to generate accessible (x)html... Not a good thing.
I totally agree. I cannot express my opinion better than this!

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 9:08 am
by Ree
I have to say I almost hate flash-only websites.

Flash is good for spicing a website up, but certainly it shouldn't be overused. An animated logo may be nice but, for example, a flash menu is something I wouldn't like to see. Another place where flash is great are slideshows and those flash tutorials covering some app usage where you can see mouse pointer clicking and explanations popping up. Everything else can be done without flash.

I suggest not to build flash-only websites and try to persuade your clients to take another, more user-friendly, route.

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 11:41 am
by jayshields
Well, personally, I'm stuck between the 2.

Flash can be great for small websites - I just went on The Raconteurs website the other day http://www.theraconteurs.com - to me, that website is awesome, great use of flash.

But you can get websites who are to over-using flash, and it spoils it.

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 11:56 am
by Ree
You have to use your keyboard to navigate the site which doesn't even work fully. Sorry, it's rubbish..

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 12:04 pm
by alex.barylski
Only about 10% of my web site is Flash based...everything else is native HTML and text...

I guess I forgot to mention that...

I am not a Flash designer, so content in Flash wouldn't do me any good, nor search engines, etc... :P

Only the layout (I should have mentioned) is typically *partially* done in Flash, like an animated header, etc...

Menus, links, etc are almost always done in plain jane HTML as I need it to be dynamic and spider friendly :P

By dynamic I mean, dynamically updated via PHP which is possible in Flash as well, but then not spider-able

For this reason, people and search engines still see my web sites regardless of what browser they use, but having never used anything other than FF and IE on Windows desktop with all bells and whistles enabled...

I can't say for sure that their browsing experience is top rate or atleast as good as it can get for any given browser...

Thats why I wonder, if perhaps I could use a layout for PDA's which excluded Images, Flash, etc...and only displayed text...

I was curious as to how you, the community would solve the issue...

Cheers :)

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 12:11 pm
by Oren
Hockey wrote:Thats why I wonder, if perhaps I could use a layout for PDA's which excluded Images, Flash, etc...and only displayed text...

I was curious as to how you, the community would solve the issue...

Code: Select all

<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" media="handheld" />

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 12:26 pm
by alex.barylski
Oren wrote:
Hockey wrote:Thats why I wonder, if perhaps I could use a layout for PDA's which excluded Images, Flash, etc...and only displayed text...

I was curious as to how you, the community would solve the issue...

Code: Select all

<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" media="handheld" />
Ok...thats cool, but what about embedded images, etc???

Do they just get ignored when that stylesheet is specified?

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 12:32 pm
by aerodromoi
timvw wrote: Today i'm always surprised that webmasters do have the time for extra's like flash and javascript but they fail to generate accessible (x)html... Not a good thing.
Right now you basically have to use javascript if you want to keep on using flash. Even though it doesn't make life any easier since you never know whether a user has a) javascript enabled and b) flash installed, I wouldn't go as far as calling flash websites an accessibility nightmare.

For one thing, you can restrict the use of javascript to MSIE visitors thanks to the HTTP_USER_AGENT. Secondly, you just have to stick to valid xhtml and offer alternatives inside the <noscript>/<object> tags.

aerodromoi

ps: Alright, I'd never use flash for content-only sites. :)

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 12:35 pm
by Oren
Hockey wrote:Ok...thats cool, but what about embedded images, etc???

Do they just get ignored when that stylesheet is specified?
No, but you can do something like this though:

Code: Select all

img {display: none;}

Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 12:36 pm
by alex.barylski
Oren wrote:No, but you can do something like this though:

Code: Select all

img {display: none;}
Nice...very clever ;)