Java And Flash


If you need me to point this stuff out, then there's something BADLY
BADLY wrong.

Flash and java have their place. It is a good place, and using it in
those places is a good thing.

It's for things like toys. Games. Things like that. In the words of JWZ,
pages that are /applications/ instead of /prose/. They have the other
benefit that, properly done, they are fast to download and fast to
use. [Using all the vector graphics facilities of flash to produce lots
and lots of eye-candy in very little download time]

Examples of this might include flash movies like that one with the stick
figures who did that long fighting scene. If you're selling sex toys
in the form of certain religious figures, where your website is mostly
an application with some small capacity to actually sell such items,
then that's fine. I really imagine that most people in the market for
such things are using IE with macromedia plugins installed.

Properly done, they do in fact have their place and are a good thing.


The rest of the time, you should remember that java and flash are
/slow/. The browsers out there have all had man-years of work put into
them making sure that they're fast and reliable when you're doing that
web browsing thing. By using flash instead you're dumping all that work.

Some people don't have flash or Java. I, for one, explicitly disable one
and haven't installed the other, because they're simply open to abuse
and it's my opinion that your site probably isn't worth my visiting if
that's somehow a key item.

Blind people - right out.

Compatability - the odds are better than even that the average java
applet won't run on my Linux box. In fact, the odds are better that
they'll work in Linux than that they'll work in all version of IE4,5,6 on
all version of windows [people still use 98 A LOT, and NT4, and 2k,
and now XP] - Hell; if Microsoft get their way, Java will be dumped
from Windows altogether, and your site won't work on /your/ computer,
let alone anyone else's.

It's a rare thing indeed for a flash or java "program" to correctly print
out. Yes. Some people print things out still. Maybe a big old document
to read on the train home. If your site has a lot of text in the form
of a flash frame that you use flash to scroll through, someone can't
print it out for consumption on the way home. One lost customer.

And the correct response, by the way, isn't "install flash". Imagine if
you will that there are some big companies out there that actually care
about security in some manner on their workstations. Where the systems
are all NT-based and the normal users don't have admin rights. If the
company policy is not to install flash because of the perceived security
threat, there is NOTHING that that person can do to make your flash-only
site run.

This could be for example a large investment bank. Security is obviously
important. People aren't usually techies. But they are most definitely
rich. Think of people who're driving classic cars.

One of them looks for a site where they can get some restoration work
done on their cars. You think they're gonna go to a company where they
can't even read the address or phone number? Now there's some /GOOD/
custom that you've just lost.

Those last examples, by the way, are explicit cases from my own personal
experience.


To all this, some people will simply say "most people currently using
my website can see my java animation of my family. And that's all I care
about". Good on you. Stick with it. But when I can't use your site,
I don't wanna know about it.