What's with the boring design of modern websites?
Discussion
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Found a website that caters for your outlook on design 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Polariz said:
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
Sorry but nope, its just looks our of date and relies far too much on graphics, the key nowadays is finding the right balance between design and content and making it all work on various devices.Polariz said:
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
Cool, it's 1998 again!londonbabe said:
Flash was always an abortion of a product, and had the worst and most unintuitive UI for authoring web content ever.
And rarely was it used for anything useful. Mostly it was just flasturbation. It was good at video, and that's it. I was predicting and hoping for its death long before Steve Jobs.
And rarely was it used for anything useful. Mostly it was just flasturbation. It was good at video, and that's it. I was predicting and hoping for its death long before Steve Jobs.
What a load of drivel.Rarely was Flash used for anything useful? Perhaps if you started web development in the last three years you might think that but off the top of my head Flash brought us YouTube, Google Maps and Streetview, photo editing in browser, music production in browser, video editing in browser, countless games, e-learning, tests (including exams), animation, live-streaming, photo galleries, betting sites, dynamic graphs and charts, advertising, marketing promotions, and also offline stuff like kiosks and in-car entertainment systems.
trashbat said:
What website designs do you think were interesting and fresh at the time? I bet Flash had nothing to do with it.
From my memory, the vast majority of websites that won design awards in the mid-2000s were Flash sites. The FWA - design awards - was almost exclusively Flash sites back then.There's a perfectly simple reason for this: Flash allowed designers total freedom and HTML and CSS did not.
Polariz said:
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
Sorry but that site is awful. Slow, too much graphics, too much hype, too little meaningful content. Typical of a 90's design house which has failed to keep up with advances in technology.SeanyD said:
Polariz said:
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
Sorry but that site is awful. Slow, too much graphics, too much hype, too little meaningful content. Typical of a 90's design house which has failed to keep up with advances in technology.Badum pssh!
nightwalker said:
Polariz said:
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
Sorry but nope, its just looks our of date and relies far too much on graphics, the key nowadays is finding the right balance between design and content and making it all work on various devices.My point is that at the time, in full screen mode this website designer made you feel like you were in a video game interface, and gave an immersive experience. The nice thing is that it also has great HCI, and is easy to navigate and get the information you need.
The fact is, I still remember 10 years on or whatever, that this website still exists - such is the impression it made on me at the time. What website does that these days? We now sadly live in a world of static tables with a lack of flair. I'd have to defer to some of our resident web designers on PH as to whether something like this (a more modern outtake mind you) could be created with HTML 5, but is a great demo of flash and its capabilities.
Polariz said:
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
Yeah, that's how I remember Flash sites! It took ages to load and ten seconds after leaving it I don't know what it was advertising. That's properly 'designed'.I'm not going to defend flash, its slow and unwieldy. What I would point out is that you're all attacking flash, which is fine. What you're failing to do is demonstrate any interesting/exciting websites of modern times. They really all do look the same, despite the advancement in technology.
Polariz said:
What you're failing to do is demonstrate any interesting/exciting websites of modern times. They really all do look the same, despite the advancement in technology.
Fair enough, moving on...I think a big problem has been the stubborn ideological refusal to allow layout tables in html. Hell, call it something else ('grid', say) if you must, but have one. Every other display system has one, from character row and column, pixels, or metric or imperial units (Windows GDI), because it is a fundamental concept in laying things out. The absence of it has led to lowest common denominator design.
grumbledoak said:
Yeah, that's how I remember Flash sites! It took ages to load and ten seconds after leaving it I don't know what it was advertising. That's properly 'designed'.
That isn't a great example of a Flash site, frankly. It's far too slow (especially if it was designed before broadband was commonplace) and the use of Flash is largely unecessary. That's the sort of site that turned people off Flash.But that's the fault of the developer, not the platform. Blaming Flash there is like blaming your telly for The X-Factor.
Btw, if you want an example of a great use of Flash, try Pixlr: http://apps.pixlr.com/editor/
grumbledoak said:
Fair enough, moving on...
I think a big problem has been the stubborn ideological refusal to allow layout tables in html. Hell, call it something else ('grid', say) if you must, but have one. Every other display system has one, from character row and column, pixels, or metric or imperial units (Windows GDI), because it is a fundamental concept in laying things out. The absence of it has led to lowest common denominator design.
Eh?I think a big problem has been the stubborn ideological refusal to allow layout tables in html. Hell, call it something else ('grid', say) if you must, but have one. Every other display system has one, from character row and column, pixels, or metric or imperial units (Windows GDI), because it is a fundamental concept in laying things out. The absence of it has led to lowest common denominator design.
Grid systems are extremely common now. The majority of sites now are built upon a system of rows and columns as it's the most effective system for responsive design. Your point is contrary though, because the common use of grid systems is exactly why we're in the current design coma!
And tables should never be used for layout... but that's another matter...
Polariz said:
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
Polariz said:
Just as a point of reference, try out www.2advanced.com to see flash sites done properly.
Sorry, clicked the back button while it was still farting about loading.Can people stop using the phrase "obsolete browsers". It doesn't mean anything and isn't a phrase you'll ever find a real web professional using.
There are older browsers and newer browsers but you need to make things work for all. If you drove to Tescos to do your shopping and the guy at the entrance stopped you and told you to park somewhere else because your car wasn't a hybrid, so obsolete would you drive around the local streets till you found a space - or drive direct to the Sainsburys down the road?
Most of my work is on websites for FTSE100 companies and it's odd for testing NOT to go all the way back to IE6. Hell there's at least one company with a top 10 ranking in the FTSE that still has (a small number of) staff PCs running IE6! OK, you're not usually talking pixel perfect in IE6 but it has to be fully functional because if your site doesn't work for a potential customer they're unlikely to become a paying customer.
There are older browsers and newer browsers but you need to make things work for all. If you drove to Tescos to do your shopping and the guy at the entrance stopped you and told you to park somewhere else because your car wasn't a hybrid, so obsolete would you drive around the local streets till you found a space - or drive direct to the Sainsburys down the road?
Most of my work is on websites for FTSE100 companies and it's odd for testing NOT to go all the way back to IE6. Hell there's at least one company with a top 10 ranking in the FTSE that still has (a small number of) staff PCs running IE6! OK, you're not usually talking pixel perfect in IE6 but it has to be fully functional because if your site doesn't work for a potential customer they're unlikely to become a paying customer.
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