Congratulations Macromedia, with a new site. I like the design, but that is about all the good things I can say about the site.
I guess it is true that a picture is worth more than a thousand words. In this case its worth more than any words, because without Flash - using Opera - this is what I get:
I guess Macromedia isn't all too interested in trying to push Flash on me either, not even to allow me to view their site..
Branden has some comments about the new Macromedia site that is worth reading.
[Update] The MM site does not work in Opera 7.02. It gets stuck in a loop the startup screen with the "Initiating Application Manager..." coming in, and then a glimse of the menu, before it start all over. Highly unusable. (This with the Flash 6 player installed).
Branden has a cool rant on his blog "How did I get here? (What Have I done?)", its a short story about how his life has changed through the Flash community. Its a real sunshine story, he got fame, wife and riches through his work with Flash ;-)
You can read more about Branden at Flashmagazine.com. Jensa did an interview with Branden at the FlashForward 2000 NYC conference entitled "Flash changed my life" which goes into more detail than Branden's post :-)
There is also a Flash/audio interview up at Flashmagazine.com: But wait, there is more.., that interview is about Flash 5 - and you can really hear Branden's enthusiasm for programming and Flash. An enthusiasm he has kept through the years. No wonder the guy is doing good :-)
Keep up the good work Branden!
FlashBang is probably going to become one of the popular extensions to Dreamweaver MX, it allows for adding navigation elements (menus, buttons, pause/play controls etc). to web pages, but it could also become a tool to hide from search engines. An effect I doubt the creators either thought of or intended and I know a lot of its users will be equally ignorant to the problems and invisibility it will bring upon them.
Now, Dreamweaver MX already has the evil of Flash menus and text implemented, and allows for generation of SWF for your web site. How that can be misused has been discussed in detail on Flazoom.com, case in point was the use of Dreamweaver MXs "Flash text" feature in a site map over at Time Warner Cables corporate site.
It might be that eye-candy and other such "subtleties" is necessary to sell software to the general public, but I still think that it should be required to add big warning messages to stupid evil functions such as the Flash menu/text in Dreamweaver MX, and programs such as FlashBang.
So why the need for warnings and why is it evil to add a little Flash to a site? Well, as I have already mentioned - the regular Joe/Jane Schmo don't understand that putting all your navigation in Flash leads to two rather serious problems:
- Search engines will have a harder time following your links, and indexing his/her site. Which in turn leads to less traffic to the site, and making it harder for any possibly usable information to propogate to the search engines.
- Users without Flash won't have access to your site. Case in point, the FlashBang web site, which - without Flash, doesn't allow any possible customers access to the order page without Flash. (Yes, I know its a bad example, since most of the people coming there probably will be Flashers on their way to get a cool new toy).
[Via JD on MX]
