Whilst looking for Atlantis photos, I found a packet of Kathleen’s shots from the 1999 Team Universe in New York City. I rescanned them, cleaned them up a bit, and converted Kat’s page to the new format (not sure how that got overlooked, since the new format is much easier for me to maintain).
If the background looks somewhat familiar, yes, these were taken in the World Trade Center courtyard.
As we wade into 2006 amidst a minor (or perhaps not so minor) Windows exploit crisis, one wonders at the plethora of clueless Web sites out there.
I’m stunned by the number of sites that are just absolutely broken for viewers without Flash. Big sites, too, sites that are paying for websters that should know better– sites like virginmobile.com, tlc.com, scifi.com, and hundreds more. These people have apparently never even considered that their sites should degrade gracefully.
The Flashers may well ask, “Why is this an issue for me?”
Well, first of all, you should generally try to avoid behaviors that are specifically denoted on Vince Flander’s famous “Web Pages That Suck” site. It’s just embarassing when someone sends that link to your boss because they’re frustrated with your broken site.
But much more important than that, you’ve created a single point of failure for your site.
Let’s say for the next zero-day exploit, Flash is the target (and a tempting one it is), and that there’s no easy patch forthcoming. Advice from the security gurus is simply, “Disable or uninstall the plugin until further notice”.
How long will it take you to rebuild your pretty, animated, multimedia site from scratch– in good ol’ HTML and CSS?
How long just to get a plain page up and working?
How many thousands of dollars of lost revenue will that cost your company in the downtime and will they take it out of your check?
Yes, I know it’s more difficult to work within the cross-browser HTMLspace. I know it takes skill and insight and experience and experimentation and compromise to get an attractive, intuitive design to work.
Guess what? That’s what you’re being paid for.
Since I write such myself, I have little patience for whiny excuses. And $DIETY help you if you ever have to defend a Flash-only site design from an ADA inquiry.
Putting the backup HTML version in place now is a win-win proposition– your non-Flash customers will appreciate it, and if Flash becomes an unexpected liability, you won’t have to scramble to recover.
But anyway.
You may have heard this before, but I’ll pass it on again:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!