Flash to be official format of Electrogarden -- Discussion

[~Synapse]

Today a big decision was made. In the past, Electrogarden was made up of mostly Flash technology. I found that we gained a lot of attention because of this, and feel that it should be re-incorporated based on the following reasons:

1) Frankly, I'm a much better Flash designer than static designer.
2) The audio streaming format of Electrogarden is Flash-based, so visitors will be required to have the Flash plugin anyway to listen to the artists here.
3) I've found ways to make Flash load fairly quickly even on the slowest modem.
4) Flash is the only way to present the FULL electronic music experience with it's movement, transitions, aesthetics.
5) Since Electrogarden is a niche site, I feel that it is important to make that niche even stronger. Nobody is doing Flash the way I envisioned it's use in Electrogarden.

Let's open it up for discussion, shall we?

This announcement will be posted in the "Questions, Comments, Suggestions" forum so we may discuss your feelings.

[~NullDevice]

Flash is alright, as long as it's done well. I personally can't stand having to navigate through endless animated splash intros, or try to figure out what exactly a "play" button looks like because the designer decided to get too clever for his own good. The best flash sites are the ones that don't try to do everything in a single flash animation - on those you hit the "back" button by reflex and suddenly you've left the site.

I'm all about usability. Especially if you're trying to sell or promote something specific.

[~Synapse]

I hear ya,

This is why this Flash topic is such a big deal. People can get rather stupid with it. I've been guilty of such things, I'll admit. Monger forwarded me an article about how most of the industry can't stand it.

This is what I feel: Flash is really cool if it a. loads fast b. is easy to navigate c. is aesthetically pleasing, and in that order. There are other things that make Flash worth it, but those are the important ones.

I'm not a programmer so I don't know how to do back-end integration, data bases, java, and the likes. I do this totally by myself unfortunately. But at the same time, I've got to create something really cool that people will find unique. Flash is the only way that I really know how to make it unique.

[~NullDevice]

Macromedia posted some "usability guidelines" for using flash that I thought were pretty good. Also Jakob Neilsen's article "Flash: 99% Bad" on useit.com gives a pretty good outline of how to make a flash presentation kludgy.

Sounds to me like you're taking all that sorta stuff into account, though, and for that I thank you.

As for programming, if you can get through all of Flash 5's "Actionscripting" or Director's Lingo stuff, picking up a development script like PHP or ASP (depending on your platform) isn't so bad. Something to do in your free time. :)

[~Synapse]

I read that article, and for the most part it's correct. I have yet to see a Flash example that is truely perfect and better than that of it's static counterpart. However, it's possible to do and I hope that I can impliment it's great technology properly.

For now, the rest of the site will pretty much remain static. What will change right away are the artist pages. Right now they just aren't all that fancy, and if I wan't to compete with what's currently available to artists I have to make those pages look pretty nice and functional.

Hopefully it will be a success....as for programming, I'm going to be taking an XML class. I do know a few things with ActionScript so I just need to figure out how to make it all communicate. Maybe in the near future I'll find someone who wants to help out with the site. For now, it's just me.