talkmagic.co.uk

Someone brought up FLASH for web sites and I thought I'd toss a couple of coins in on that issue.

Most agents & bookers are CHEAP e.g. they have old, out of date PCs in their office and many are still using dial up. Add to this the fact that the majority of the consumer base are still using older PC technology and dial up modems vs. High Speed e.g. if your site is loaded down with Flash and all the other fancy stuff IT WILL NOT LOAD... it it doesn't load, it don't get seen; if it don't get seen YOU DON'T GET WORK!

Probably one of the most practical "new" personal web sites I've ever seen belongs to Mentalist-Comic Jon Stetson. If you don't know the name, fasten your seat belts. This guy does as many as five shows a day six days a week at top dollar rates ALL OVER THE WORLD! He's also one of the partners behind Boston's popular Mystery Lounge... (if you've ever wanted to see how powerful a Magic Square act could be, watch Jon's video clips on his site.)

Magicians, by nature, are pack rats. I know that truth all too well. Much of my youth being vested in having to work to support the 340 some odd illusions I and my partner (mentor) had in storage vs. making a living (I'm not talking about small "hand-props" I'm talking major stage illusions; most of which came from some of the most famous shows in magic history). In short, we love gadgets and "neat" things e.g. we love to have the latest in such i.e. a nice flash loaded web site that says "we're great".

My site is down presently due to some revisions we are doing -- a compomise of sorts. When you come to the front page you will be given options. This isn't unusual but what is unusual is that my options aren't for flash but PowerPoint.

Why?

With a PowerPoint presentation I can actually PRESENT my message vs. bombarding a potential client with loud music and strange animations. It has a purpose and more importnat, it can be downloaded by the buyer and saved for further review & comparison. PowerPoint presentations will be available on each one of my services pages throughout the site, which gives the buyer a sense of convenience and prevents me from having to send them more literature later (they can likewise download PDF Brochures & Press Materials)

The most important aspect as to what I'm doing is that it keeps my site clean, easy to load and thus, accessible to more of the consumer base.

Believe it or not, most serious agents & talent buyers skip those fancy FLASH FILLED sites.

A thought provoking post from Criag and when thought about it's true what you say.

No doubt there are people out there with out of date PC's but I'm not sure about it being majority now, certainly not in the UK.

As someone that uses the internet a lot at work nearly all of the supplier web sites that I visit have introductions that have been made up from various tools such as Flash etc. and underneath, have a phrase that says ' click to skip introduction'. No doubt they have taken some time and cost to create these yet how many of us, despite having the connection speed still simply select tthe 'skip the intro' option? I know that I do.

Just abot everyone with Windows has PowerPoint and it's such a great and often overlooked tool. The Microsoft web site has a free PowerPoint viewer that can be downloaded too if you dont own the package, so at least you can watch if not create.

It is a very interesting post from Craig, and a completly valid one.

The general tone from a developers point of view right now seems to be based around accessibilty, the perect site should be viewable by anyone, regardless of the apps they are using or the speed of thier connection.

The future of the internet seems to be dawning with the introduction of RIA (Rich Internet Applications) which are focused around usablity, merging the connection between Desktop Applications and Web-Based content. Things like Macromedia Flash will come more prodominant in those solutions but not in the way that we see it used in the majoirty of cases at the moment.

The whole concept of ever connected content really is starting to become a reality, and all we need to do now is begin weeding out the junk that is splashed around and focus the idea on giving users high quality content.

In the ideal world we'd be able to access anything we want whenever we want it.

I'm not sure the avenue of PowerPoint is quite right for a web-based environment, but i will agree that it is a very powerfull tool and most definatly has its uses.

The whole 'Flash Intro' scene is very cliche now, and i wouldnt encourage its use at any point as it just delays your user from accessing what they want most, your content.

Flash is a great medium for using to present ideas to people, whether it be a sales pitch, a demonstration of your product or perhaps somthing like a tutorial or support document... but again you cant use it to present your key content, it just blocks access to those users that cannot view the flash documents.

Another intersting use for Flash is FlashPaper, we saw this portable document format spring up alongside the merger of Adobe and Macromedia, considering around 95% or PC's have flash installed it made sense to make a portable document format that can be viewed by them, on the off chance they cannot browse a PDF file.

Rob