Flash website

Joshua James

Joshua James

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Any recommendations for a UK based company that does flash template websites & hosting?

Looking at bludomain at the moment. Love some of the style options but would prefer to deal with a UK business (Keep it in the UK - credit crunch and all that!)
:wave:
 
Richard King said:
why flash?
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Presumably to stop people like me from seeing it :lol:

edit: I should perhaps explain that I don't allow javascript or flash on my computers as client side scripting is the spawn of the devil and a blight on the face of the world wide web (and the most common vector for virus / trojan infection). Which means (a) a lot of the sites posted here for C&C I can't see or navigate properly so I don't comment on and (b) I don't ever post "I've got a trojan on IE and mcaffee / norton can't get rid of it" type topics in this forum ;)
 
You may want to re-think looking at flash websites. It's a bit of a contentious issue as to how long flash will survive in the CS industry at the moment and in any case it's a particularity bad example of HCI usability. For example, people with visual disabilities often use screen-readers that parse the (X)HTML code into audible, spoken text so that they can use websites but for a flash site all they'll get is a "flash object" and won't be able to use the site. There are similar circumstances for other disabilities and circumstances where users are forced to use older browsers that don't support the latest version of Flash meaning the site will render differently not forgetting the fact that Flash is a buggy, memory intensive hunk of a thing anyway :lol:

In any case, for a photography 'template' site and hosting I recommend you look at clickpic and Zenfolio :)
 
onomatopoeia said:
Presumably to stop people like me from seeing it :lol:

edit: I should perhaps explain that I don't allow javascript or flash on my computers as client side scripting is the spawn of the devil and a blight on the face of the world wide web (and the most common vector for virus / trojan infection). Which means (a) a lot of the sites posted here for C&C I can't see or navigate properly so I don't comment on and (b) I don't ever post "I've got a trojan on IE and mcaffee / norton can't get rid of it" type topics in this forum ;)
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Pops on web dev hat

Doenst matter what we produce sites in - lots of corporate networks dont allow flash either. Some users wont download plugins etc..

Some people switch of scripting, others have stupid screen resoloutions and turn the text size up or down in the browser to compensate

So what ever we develop sites in, some groups of people will struggle, usually because of the way they choose to surf. I havent had a virus on any machines for about 10 years, and i have scripting, flash and everything else switched on. As a developer, if i took accont of allthe possible things people switched off, we would have websites in courier, black on white with hyperlink menu's, no images, no css, no JS no plugins, nothing
 
onomatopoeia said:
Presumably to stop people like me from seeing it :lol:

edit: I should perhaps explain that I don't allow javascript or flash on my computers as client side scripting is the spawn of the devil and a blight on the face of the world wide web (and the most common vector for virus / trojan infection). Which means (a) a lot of the sites posted here for C&C I can't see or navigate properly so I don't comment on and (b) I don't ever post "I've got a trojan on IE and mcaffee / norton can't get rid of it" type topics in this forum ;)
Click to expand...

Just a practacle note

We have a nailed down work network here, and then we have some "exposed machines" not on the network, that we use for surfing and the like. All of them have AV, firewalls, spyware protection

A clean / dirty approach to security can be helpful in your situation. IN the worse case scenario, if our dirty machines getan infection, we remaster them
 
Richard King said:
So what ever we develop sites in, some groups of people will struggle, usually because of the way they choose to surf. I havent had a virus on any machines for about 10 years, and i have scripting, flash and everything else switched on. As a developer, if i took accont of allthe possible things people switched off, we would have websites in courier, black on white with hyperlink menu's, no images, no css, no JS no plugins, nothing
Click to expand...

I have had a virus a few years ago ("MS anti spyware") that came from an apparently reputable website that puported to have a driver for an old printer I used to own. I could see the anti-virus software "quarantining" stuff and still got infected with it. I've always been careful and this was the only time that the AV kicked off for anything other than false positives, and on the one time I needed it it failed. Nowadays I'm a lot more circumspect about allowing javascript etc.

It is still possible to design good looking, functional websites by treating HTML as a markup language and not as a portal to client side scripting. Some things needed it, e.g. the live timing that the F1 website uses, but on a lot of sites it is just unnecessary faff that gets in the way.

(I am also a developer, but I write mostly assembly language and some C. And unfortunately I have been lumbered with some php recently as well.)
 
From the F1 site:
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/AC_OETags.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/swfobject2.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/mootools.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/cookies.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/global.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/navigation.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/slimbox.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/galleryRollover.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/slideshow.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/image_right_click.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/LiveTimingPopup.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/time.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/webservice.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/f1_forms.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/f1_detect.js"></script>

from the BBC site:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://node1.bbcimg.co.uk/glow/gloader.0.1.3.js"> gloader.use("glow", {map: "http://node1.bbcimg.co.uk/glow/glow/map.1.7.2.js"}); </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.bbc.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/1.1.3/newnav/script/blq_core.js"></script>

From this page!
<script type="text/javascript" src="clientscript/vbulletin_post_loader.js?v=384"></script>

Essentially, pretty much every mainstream site is using javascript, which is why from a design point of view it is the obvious choice - an individual user can either view most sites, or not... And to be totally fair to anyone designing a site, if you have a user complaining they cant view the site, then the issue is with them. A line needs to be drawn somewhere. javascript is used in virtually every large mainstream site. If a user turns off javascript, then they wont be able to use most sites properly, including the majoritory of large trusted ones. Being able to use javascript is bundled with all the main browsers


Flash however is not, and is an elective plugin. However, there is nothing wrong with flash, except after the event, it is hard to edit, and very difficult to SEO properly. There are exceptions to this, however in the whole, Flash adds a design overhead, and a knock on to any subsequent editing

THe other downside to flash is that the flash plugin is a moving goalpost. Whilst all updates were supposed to be backwardly compatible, a year or so ago, there was an update that threw a huge spanner at a lot of sites, stopping the flash parts from working properly. A lot of designers ran out of trust at that point. On the other hand, Flash is a bit like a PDF - Browser agnostic. It is becomming an increasing pain working arround all the differences between browsers
 
Richard King said:
A line needs to be drawn somewhere. javascript is used in virtually every large mainstream site. If a user turns off javascript, then they wont be able to use most sites properly, including the majoritory of large trusted ones.
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I draw the line at the place which says "HTML is a markup language, not a programming language." I'm not the only one but I realise I have lost the war.

Certain sites I trust, f1.com and bbc.co.uk being amongst them. I don't trust any php based forum software though (way too many exploits in the past) and this site works fine without javascript. Of course the skimlinks don't work, but that doesn't affect my browsing experience.
 
Hi All,

TBH the flash thing is more to do with the look of the site....

The templates are cheap and easy to manipulate and love it or hate it, Flash does produce some excellent looking sites.

TBH I am no techie when it comes to the web and therefore I want something that looks great but has an idiot proof back end. The most important thing of all of course.... cost!
 
onomatopoeia said:
I don't trust any php based forum software
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The security of any software application is down to it's developers and does not reflect the programming/scripting/markup language in which it was written in. There are plenty of well documented ways of securing PHP scripts.

Oh and, TalkPhotography uses PHP in places ;)
 
I'm sure some of the less democratic governments around the world would be impressed by the astonishing level of misinformation on this thread... some by supposed web developers. Embarrassing almost.
 
onomatopoeia said:
I draw the line at the place which says "HTML is a markup language, not a programming language." I'm not the only one but I realise I have lost the war.

Certain sites I trust, f1.com and bbc.co.uk being amongst them. I don't trust any php based forum software though (way too many exploits in the past) and this site works fine without javascript. Of course the skimlinks don't work, but that doesn't affect my browsing experience.
Click to expand...

vBulletin, the software that powers this forum, is practically entirely written in PHP.
 
KayJay said:
I'm sure some of the less democratic governments around the world would be impressed by the astonishing level of misinformation on this thread... some by supposed web developers. Embarrassing almost.
Click to expand...

If we're so misinformed why don't you correct us? :p
 
I've done far too many times on this sub forum, does my nut in. I'll see if I can find a post.
 
I actually really hate full flash websites. I had a digital director once who always insisted on building full flash websites for all the wrong reasons. He was an advocate of Flash and because of a complex that developed in him felt like he had make us developers build everything in Flash to make him feel better. I also really hate having to defend flash but sometimes it needs done simply because there are a lot of people blaming the technology rather than the developers.

It's like a saying a Ferrari corners terrible but forgetting that there's a chimp sitting in the drivers seat.
 
Also if you call yourself a Flash developer but only ever use the timeline and the Flash IDE and have no idea what a SWC is then you should find another profession. *rant*

Sorry, I've totally taken this thread off topic now. My apologies :(
 
Haha, I quite agree with you there actually. Flash in itself isn't an entirely bad technology however when 'developers' consisntently create sites that aren't space or time efficient it starts to raise questions about the technology as a whole. But in any case I'm not a fan of proprietory browser plugins when it comes to web design due to the the fact that it's so easy to break a lot of usability principles simply by using something like flash. It's probably here to stay despite the efforts of HTML5. I think used appropriately Flash can, and probably will, be good for embedding media into web pages but to me at least sites that are entirely flash driven is like saying "Here's a memory card, go take a photo with it" and by that I mean that flash is part of a bigger and sites shouldn't revolve around that single technology.

Don't worry about being off topic, we're in the right thread section :p FLash and plugins in general are a bit of a funny issue, especially recently, but I reckon it's an issue that needs addressing :)
 
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