Oct 23 2006
Poor Website Design
This is a recycled post from Mud Songs.
Flash websites are my #1 online pet peeve. Some filmmakers, film companies and film festival organizers seem to be in love with flash, but I’m not sure it’s such a good move. Here’s why:
1) Accessing information through flash animation can be impractical. Flash may look nice, but it slows things down. Waiting for large image files to load, or animated pages to expand and contract or fade in and out (whatever the animation happens to be), gets kind of tedious. A straightforward non-flash design is always faster and more functional.
2) Pages within a flash site cannot be bookmarked. Subsequently the information on the website cannot be easily distributed (again, accessing the information becomes impractical). For instance, if I work my way through a maze of flash pages on a filmmaker’s website, and I find something interesting about the filmmaker, I can’t send a link to that page to friends because flash doesn’t allow users to bookmark individual pages within the site. So I’d have to tell my friends something like, “Go to the website. Wait for all the images to load. Then click around until you find the Current Projects box. Click that box and wait for the images to load. Then click the second title from the bottom.” That’s a bit exaggerated, but the point is, not being able to link to specific information on the site slows down (or completely stops) the distribution of that information. Especially if…
3) There is no actual text on the website that can be copied-and-pasted into an email (and then distributed). I’ve seen flash sites that consist almost entirely of images. There’s text, but it’s part of an image that can’t be copied into an email. So now I’ve got a website that doesn’t allow me to link to specific pages, and even when I get there, I can’t share the information with anyone. How is that a good thing?
4) Flash pages usually require a high-speed connection. So that automatically cuts off 25% of internet users who have only dial-up connections — or it makes it very frustrating for those users.
Film companies, film festival organizers and especially independent filmmakers might be better off staying away from flash. Good-looking professional non-flash websites are just as easy to design, and much more functional for the average internet user.
John Walkenbach created a list of his own Web Browsing Pet Peeves. It’s probably not a bad idea to listen to some of the things he says. Here are some items from his list that I agree with:
Inappropriate Use Of Flash
It’s not that Flash sucks. Flash certainly has its place on the Web. It’s great for games and special types of presentations. But in the vast majority of cases, it simply doesn’t work when it makes up an entire site. Why? (1) The text is not resizable, (2) The window itself is not resizable, (3) It’s impossible to link to a particular part of the site, (4) It’s usually very slow, and (5) Flash designers have a tendency to reinvent the wheel and come up with all sorts of weird navigational systems.
He’s much better at getting to the point than I am.
Using a “Splash Screen”
What a waste of time. I didn’t come to your site to see your logo. Why make me click again to get to the content? Or worse, make me sit through some worthless animation?
Useless Searches
Ever try to find something at a megasite such as www.microsoft.com? Forget it. It has search buttons all over the place, but none of them seem capable of locating what you’re really looking for.
Tip: The most efficient way to search for something at microsoft.com is to use Google. Just add this to your search term(s): “site:microsoft.com”.
The MySpace search engines is a good example of this. I recently did a search for some filmmakers I know have MySpace pages, and nothing came up. I had to do a Google search the way John recommended.
Sites That Try to be a Movie
The Web is not a movie theater. Nobody want to watch animations about your company.
I would add that no one wants to be forced to watch animations about your company. I can see it if you’re an animation or film compnay. But at least give us the option of not watching animations that only get in the way of accessing the content.
I’d add another pet peeve to the list:
Removing Pages From the Site
I’ve been to film festival websites that will list certain information on specific pages, which I then bookmark so I can read the information in more detail at a later date. But when I check the bookmark, say, a week later, the page no longer exists. Or the URL for that specific page has changed. That’s just sloppy web-designing. All URLs should be permanent for future referencing.
I’ve also gone to festival websites and been unable to find the most basic information, the kind of stuff most people want to know when they go to festival website such as:
1) The criteria for submitting a film.
2) The deadline for submissions.
3) About / Contact information (including phone, email and post).
4) The date of the festival.
5) The films playing at the festival, and the filmmakers.
I understand the need for making a good impression, but sometimes I wish more attention was given to the practical retrevial of information than to all the flashy stuff that mostly just shows off the web-designers “creativity.”
P.S.: J-Walk provides an example of a brain-dead Flash site.
