Shoutbox

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Boulton

• Search engine optimisation
  
• Usability
  
• Accessibility (legally, your site must be accessible by those with disabilities)
  
• Screen readers cannot read Flash content
  
• Mobile/portable browser access
  
• Flash files are larger
  
• You require people have flash installed to view anything on the site
  
• There's no reason for it to be flash - the layout isn't "interactive" - it is static content
  
• I can't use [Page down] to scroll through the content on the pages. Why should I need to use my mouse to view a web page?

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my feedback on your reasons in order:

• Your right about that, but for this site the title, meta description and meta keywords are enough
  
• 99% of our visitors have flash installed and the site isn't difficult to use.
  
• With all due respect for those with disabilities but we can't do good for everyone! We have to keep in mind that the people we are trying to reach love animation and flash websites.
  
• Same answer as the above question
  
• My mobile views the website perfectly and I'm working on a RSS feed that can be used by mobile/portable users.
  
• The total size of the swf file is 288KB, that takes about 0,5 seconds to load for people with a broadband connection and about 4,8 seconds for people with a smallband connection. Sorry but people who can't wait that long just aren't worth it to visit the site. Anyway if I had done it without flash it would certainly have been more than 288KB and it would be much slower because the visitor would have to load multiple files.
  
• 99% of our visitors have flash installed and 100% of the people we purpose to reach with this website have flash installed.
  
• There are fading effects wich cannot be done as fluently with any other technology than flash, i don't like seeing anoying page refreshes everytime I click a menu-item, it's better to stream music, ... the content is not static, there's a shoutbox, every tekst you see on the website comes out of a mysql database.
  
• Why do some people use a electric lawn mower and some a lawn mower driven by oil? It does the same thing so what does it mather? And if you don't like to use your mouse, why do you have one?

The way a website is maid depends on the people you make it for. The people we make it for just have flash installed, have a mouse they like to use, don't like the ugly standard scrollbars and just love to hear some music .