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Simon Willison’s Weblog

Cold War check point

One main reason I detest 100% Flash-based sites so much is because they don’t promote sharing and linking which are two big things to do on the Web. See a cool new game screenshot that you want to show your friend? Sorry, no can do with that 100% Flash-based site because everything is contained under one URL which is like a Cold War check point for the entire site.

Nollind Whachell in a discussion on Asterisk*.

Posted 29th January 2004 at 1:08 am

This is Cold War check point by Simon Willison, posted on 29th January 2004.

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8 comments

  1. Well, if the Flash author wants to make an inaccessible site to various groups of users and user-agents that's there own choice. I rarely even bother to navigate 100% Flash sites if I stumble onto them, for a plethora of reasons.

    Robert Wellock - 29th January 2004 09:14 - #

  2. Totally OK, I used to use Flash a lot. But over the "linkless" of flash websites. Usability speaking, flash is deconcentring the reader. Reader ? you say? Yes! Reader! The first aim of a website is to be read isn't it true?

    karim - 29th January 2004 19:23 - #

  3. Not that I am supporting purely Flash sites, but I believe it would be possible to link to a particular section of a purely Flash site by sending parameters in the URL which the Flash movie could pick up and use to go to the right place. I'm not sure anyone actually does this, though.

    JT

    John - 29th January 2004 19:25 - #

  4. Here is a link to how it could be done:

    http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/flashQueryString/

    JT

    John - 29th January 2004 19:37 - #

  5. But flash sites look so cool! You can have bits flying in from the side and fading in and spinning and zooming out and morphing from a circle into the name of your website and stuff, and then all your links can slide down and it just looks really neat.

    I know whenever I go to an all-flash website, I think to myself "Wow, here's a site who know what they're doing, and they're not afraid to pump the time and money into their project" - it just gives a company more credibility.

    Randy Towers - 30th January 2004 00:20 - #

  6. I don't _really_ have any problem with flash websites, but then again I very rarely use them. With action scripting and combining PHP with Flash it's possible to do most things, but to me it seems like a lot of work only to still be excluding large user groups.

    Allyn Edwards - 30th January 2004 02:11 - #

  7. Sorry to get off-topic, but whats this about you having a blog at Sitepoint? Its hard enough to keep one going (at least for me). How are you going to manage two? I hope you don't end up ignoring one to keep the other going.

    Travis Watkins - 30th January 2004 06:25 - #

  8. Americans can now feel reassured that if the Soviet Union ever springs back to life, restarts the cold war and designs a new MIG fighter more advanced than anything now in the skies, the U.S. Air Force is ready. Unfortunately, when it comes to fighting today's war in Iraq, the Pentagon is still struggling to get enough armor into the field to protect its exhausted and badly stretched troops

    Buy Levitra - 30th October 2004 08:20 - #

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