I hate Flash because it sucks.
Oh, I know you’re out there, you apologists who say, “Flash doesn’t suck, people do.” I say, what’s the difference?
So far, I’ve run across one proposed use for Flash that makes me say, “hey! cool!” The rest of the time, when I see that “loading, please wait” thing at the front of every Flash movie ever created, I’m all eye-rolling and forehead-slapping and “not another one.” I’ve been doing this a lot lately while visiting restaurant sites, because–as we all know–one cannot have a restaurant site without the whole thing being built in Flash. As we all know, HTML is wholly unsuited for presenting anything as complex as a menu; this would explain why, when a browser that doesn’t support Flash attempts to load a Flash-based restaurant site, the site cannot possibly redirect to anything other than a missing plugin icon.
(Elettaria is the exception that proves the rule. I almost want to go there when we’re in New York, just to give them props for having an alternative, non-Flash, site that works on the iPhone. But Akhtar Nawab lost on Iron Chef America, so I couldn’t possibly.*)
And then there’s the thing with the scroll bars. Browsers have scroll bars built right in. When you spin the wheel on your mouse, the page scrolls up and down (and, if you’re using a Mighty Mouse on a Mac, from side to side). I don’t think I’ve actually clicked a scroll bar and dragged it in about three years.
Except: Flash doesn’t obey the wheely-mouse’s orders. When you spin the wheel, Flash chortles mischievously. When you get over yourself and click and drag, the content scrolls jerkily and too quickly. But, oh, what am I on about? The scroll bar itself is just so lovely.
Gorgeous! I’m happy to give up the use of my mouse wheel for that!
Whatever you do, by the way, don’t click on the little line in the middle there and try to drag. Though it’s in the middle of the scroll bar, it’s actually, I guess, not part of the scroll bar. It’s just … decorative?
At this point you may be wondering what inserted this particular bee in my particular bonnet. It’s this:
That’s from FarmVille, a Flash-based Facebook game similar to, but different from, Farm Town. I’ve hit a bit of a wall with Farm Town, and against my own better judgment I’ve started dabbling in FarmVille. I think the graphics are way cuter, and I was able to give my avatar green hair and a green goatee. More importantly, the interface is a bit friendlier. It knows when a field is ready to harvest, for example, and you can just click once, without first having to go get a special harvest tool. Then it knows that field is fallow, and you can just click again to plow it, without having to switch to a special plow tool.
The problem is that simple geometry seems to be beyond the ken of Flash. I added the red circle, to highlight my mouse pointer. See how the bulk of it’s kind of right between two wheat fields, with the actual tip of the arrow–the part of the pointer that points–clearly aimed at the wheat in one of those fields? And then see how neither of those two fields is highlighted? In order to harvest my own wheat, I practically had to point at my neighbor’s eggplants.
“Fully Grown (Click to harvest),” it says. “Click where, you Flash-y bastard?” I say.
Farm Town does this, too, and it’s one of the reasons that I’ve lost interest in it. Any given object on the farm has an active and clickable area of about one pixel, and that one pixel may or may not lie in the vicinity of the object itself, and woe betide a farmer who’s unwilling to hunt around for it. At first I thought that FarmVille managed all of this scary screen geometry a lot better, but apparently I was wrong.
Why (you might ask) don’t I just stop using these things, if they annoy me so? That’s an excellent question, and my answer is entirely intelligent and mature: Dude! Time’s not just gonna waste itself! Duh!
*Just kidding, of course.
I absolutely agree about the flash scrollbars. Nothing irritates me more than not being able to use my wheel on my mouse or the built in scrollbar on my laptop’s built in mouse. Clicking on a scrollbar is so 2002!
Dang! That should have been the title of this post: “Clicking on a scrollbar is so 2002!”
Agreed, Matt. (And, don’t even get me started about church and religious organization websites using Flash!)
I’m more “invested” in Farm Town, so I’ll putz along, between job hunting, etc.
[...] Okay, this is something that has bugged me for a while. People who say “interactive” when they mean “hard to use” and “Flash scrollbars“. [...]
I also agree with you on the flash scroll bars, i hate them.
But with your issue with farmville’s (which i so love) pointer, i quite disagree on that. i noticed that your pointer’s point actually is over the lot at the top. which explains why the top plot, and neither of the two plots in question, is highlighted. i just wanna point (no pun intended) that out.
I see. The game acts as if the plots are bare. That’s handy for those of us with x-ray vision.
Your personal observations don’t count as the appropriate information background you should have before judging something.
So I wonder, how is that you’re SO angry about something you actually don’t know?
THE DON’T FORGET THINGS
First of all, don’t forget that html sites do not control the mouse wheel at all. Browsers do!
When html indicates something in your site, all types of browsers react somehow to this. Some might even not react at all!!
You, as an html developer, will never have the control over this. You just put and regulate.
This is not the way flash works. Flash doesn’t direct to the browser; it directs to the add-on component inside the browser. The same company created the add-on component creates the development tool builds the flash site.
Flash add-on component is just drawing graphics to the browser, leaving nothing else to the browser’s disposal. That’s why flash has always the same outcome. You will never see outcome failures like html do between Internet Explorer and FireFox.
MOUSE WHEEL
Inside flash, the mouse wheel movement is controlled by a number of events. Flash developer can and must define in the site how and/or where/when mouse wheel interacts with it.
CONTROLS
Unlike scrollbar and the other finite html controls with specific reactions according to the browser’s disposal, flash developer can make unlimited controls reacting with unlimited ways with the mouse wheel (or anything else). The developer through the flash site indicates how, NOT the browser.
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WHO TO BLAME
Unlike html developer who is mostly put and/or regulates controls, flash developer actually CREATES them and makes them work.
So, what they have told you is actually accurate: “put the blame on the developer” who is the 100% controller of what and how everything works in the flash site you have observed.
NOT ALWAYS THE BEST CHOICE
Flash is NOT always the best choice to create a site e.g. I would like better see my blog in html rather than flash. I understand that the html-site way to develop has specific advantages like the unified way of handling and is working very well for content-based sites.
BUT flash sites are certainly the BEST WAY
- to promote business or products in the web,
- to create games or internet software like photoshop express,
- to create internet applications solutions like e-commerce (we will further see in the near future by flash builder)
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AND FEW MORE THINGS
Although you might thing flash site is hard to build, library is assuring that everything build once. Sometimes you can find it already written in Internet (not even once).Flash add-on component is embedded in almost every browser of active Internet users. Without it, browser wouldn’t work normally with a large part of the web, because many websites are controlled by flash functional controls (e.g. banner menu)Google, Yahoo and the most search engines are reading flash content.However, there is also another method suggested by google, which is let the developer serve search engines with an alternate html content, instead of flash.Flash sites can interact directly with browser standard functions (like front, back, bookmark etc).Flash sites can stretch horizontally and/or vertically. Fix size is not a mandatory.Flash site loaded faster than html. Unlike html, which is loading separately every single element of the page, flash can even load everything in one single file. A 100K file is loaded faster than 100 files of 1K. In addition, flash site can be loaded all in once or separately in two or more parts, according to what the developer defines for the best.
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Large-scale companies like Loreal, Dior, Gillette, Volkswagen, Mini, Adidas, Bacardi and many-many others, have dropped their html sites in order to promote their valuable profiles with flash sites. The number is still increasing as they drift the smaller ones.
MY SUGGESTION
I could still go on and on writing many more things, but I think you already have seen my point.
Hating flash is useless! It seams like spoiled child hitting the leg down suggesting foolish things.
Like everything in web develop, you might benefit of learning something new. Learn how to build with flash, see what happens, and if there is still something you don’t like, ask, seek for an answer and then write down your opinion as a reasonable man.
It’s not wise being someone who just hates.