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How to Produce Truly Awful Software
The software world is becoming more competitive, and in light of this increased competition, it becomes necessary to give some thought as to how to gain supremacy when producing mediocre or truly horrid software. We have developed the following guidelines to help perpetuate the myth that sub-standard software is a necessary interference with productivity:
1. Steal ideas from other developers. This is necessary to develop a product when you have no creativity yourself. If you insist loudly enough, and often enough, that it was your idea, people will eventually believe you.
2. Prosecute, vigorously, anyone who tries to develop an idea even remotely similar to yours. It does not matter that you stole the idea to begin with.
3. Buy out the competition. This is the best option for squashing upstarts who come up with a truly original idea. This is essential if the idea threatens you with obsolescence. If it is something people really want, you can release your own buggy version a year later, and then use it as proof that the idea was not very good to start with, or, alternately, take credit for the whole thing if you do get it to work on your existing clumsy foundation.
4. Bloat is Beautiful. If there is a more cumbersome and awkward way to write code, use it. If you can increase the size of the program, and the resources it demands, do so. This achieves a range of objectives, from annoyance, to giving the appearance that you actually added something useful to the program.
5. Require as much RAM as possible. This will place an increased financial burden on the users, as well as perpetuating the technological tradition of planned obsolescence. If you also produce computer systems, you are in a win-win situation. You may also buy stock in companies that produce memory chips, and you’ll be able to assure your future financial base.
6. Add unnecessary features. Make them look really good, so it appears that you tried to please your customers. This tactic is especially useful in achieving maximum bloat and memory usage. It has the further benefit of slowing down operations, placing an additional burden on the computer, and interfering with productivity. Unnecessary features need not be stable, unexpected errors, hangs, and restarts serve to lower the overall expectation of quality.
7. Any new feature which is introduced must be accompanied by at least 10 new bugs. Less than this will foster unrealistic expectations of quality in the minds of your users. If possible, bugs should conform to the following ratios:
- 1 in 10 should be serious enough to stop the feature from performing at all, on at least 1/3 of all computers.
- 2 in 10 should cause the computer to require restarting. Complete failure to respond, when multiple programs are opened with unsaved work is optimal.
- 2 in 10 should cause the program to close without warning, or to hang and fail to respond. Under no circumstances should there be a pattern to these behaviors. Corruption of documents in progress is an added bonus.
- The remaining 5 of 10 should produce random annoyances such as inappropriate responses to menu commands, dramatic system slowdown, cryptic error messages, failure to open compatible documents, etc.
Patches and updates should promise solutions to these problems, but should not actually provide them.
8. Plumb the potential of dialog boxes. Dialog boxes with unhelpful information should appear at random. You can use them to notify the user of system processes which they do not need to know about (or do not care about), produce error messages which are not related to any action the user performed, or to delineate steps to a process which could be done in a single step.
9. Confirm everything. The simpler the task, the more annoying it is to confirm it. The less likely people are to make a mistake, the more important it is to put in a dialog box to confirm the task. This feature is a cardinal hallmark of bad software, and helps to keep the annoyance factor high, and the user expectations low, so do not overlook it when putting the finishing touches on your masterpiece.
10. Create the illusion of security on the surface. This will relieve you of the obligation of providing meaningful security protection, while giving you the added benefit of being able to create further interference with productivity. The following dialog (or the written equivalent) should be used as often as possible:
“Your computer is doing something that may present a risk. You may have started this process on purpose, or it may be starting without your knowledge. This process may be harmful to your computer – just because you started it does not mean it is not dangerous. This process may cause considerable harm to your computer, up to, and including, total data loss. On the other hand, this process may be necessary to the function of your computer, and failure to allow it to continue may seriously compromise your ability to use the computer to perform essential functions. Click Yes if you wish to continue this process. Click No if you wish to discontinue this process.”
This warning may be followed by small print, reading: “Continuing this process may void your warranty.”
11. Silence your critics. Use creative methods to punish your critics, while rewarding people who praise your software.
12. Force your users to upgrade. This removes the ability for users to choose an older, more stable version of software over a newer, buggy version. Such choices place an unreasonable burden of quality on you, and give the user an excessive degree of control over their own computer.
13. Assume the user is stupid. This assumption opens all kinds of possibilities for maximization of useless dialog boxes, but also allows you to bury necessary controls so that the user cannot locate them. The potential is far greater though, because an assumption of stupidity of the user also relieves you of the obligation of providing anything that is user-friendly, and increases your ability to create more awkward and cumbersome interfaces to interfere with accomplishing simple tasks.
14. Assume the user must be protected from themselves. Ownership of a computer is too great a burden for the average person, but they do not know this, so you must not let them know that you have protected them from themselves. It is best to create the ILLUSION on the surface that they have control of the software, but the real controls should be hidden, and only accessible if someone is aware of the hidden manner of accessing them. This strategy causes untold frustration in the user, as they repeatedly attempt to access the false controls to set necessary configurations or give permissions, not realizing that the controls they are accessing are not the ones they need to access. Naming the real controls and the false ones with the same name further enhances your ability to feel superior and to frustrate the user.
15. When issuing new versions, maximum effort should be taken to introduce a wide range of new (unnecessary, and useless) features, but persistent problems and annoyances should not be repaired. The prettier you can make the new features, the better – this helps achieve your goal of high RAM requirements, and it helps to make it look like you actually added value when in fact you did not. It is easier and more fun to create eye candy than it is to repair deep problems or patch bugs and security holes. Eye candy has the added benefit of being more visually appealing for promotion of the new version, and is easier to promote than stability, enhanced productivity, or greater ease of use.
16. Change the rules. This is most effective if you can establish a standard way of doing things, and then change it after your user base is finally adapted to it. Making the interface less intuitive than it was originally is optimal. A great way to achieve this is to change everything that works, but do not fix the problems.
17. Provide the illusion of automated help. When errors occur, or programs stop responding, provide a dialog box which offers to find a solution to the problem. No further programming is necessary in this feature, other than a progress bar, followed by a message which says that no solution was found, and which instructs the user to visit the software publisher’s website to look for an update. This feature does not provide any useful function, but leaves the user with the feeling that at least you TRIED to help them. This is an easy, and inexpensive way to enhance public relations, without having to actually provide anything of substance.
The software world is advancing, and becoming ever more complex. Keeping software from performing predictably is in the best interest of every software developer, lest computer users feel that good function is a justifiable expectation. It is our hope that this guideline can assist developers in maintaining the status quo, so that profit margins will not be negatively impacted by the expectation of true progress.
If this guideline is adhered to by current developers, we can look forward to wide vistas of ease and profit in the future.
It’s Just Life After Cancer
Alex’s blood tests were ambiguous. They contained “immature cells”. For a kid who has come out of chemo for Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, that is unsettling news. The lab said they’d get the results confirmed and clarified, and that we’d have to wait until they did. That was on Friday.
Of course, no one was in a hurry over the weekend. Had this been the relapse it very well could have been, the four days that it eventually took just to get the results back could have made a huge difference in his prognosis. Relapse is grim enough as it is, and delays make it worse.
We agonized over the weekend, and through Monday, calling to find out what the status was. We were finally informed on Tuesday afternoon, that he had “reactive cells”. This was their way of telling us that it was normal cells, but cells which are not normally found in the blood (they are normally confined to the marrow). There are three basic times when they come into the blood stream – when the body is reacting to an illness (generally a significant one such as flu or mono, or something else that you know they had), when the body has been subject to trauma, or when the body is stressed by a disease process (cancer can be one of those, or Crohn’s, or other serious but silent illnesses).
To our knowledge, Alex has none of those. His weight had also dropped significantly, and he is looking very skinny and losing strength, feeling fatigued and cranky. Nothing dramatic, but there, and worrisome. The very symptoms he had four years ago at initial diagnosis.
His other blood counts are not typical for a reaction that would normally accompany the presence of reactive cells – no atypical rise or fall in other blood counts. Just this one odd blip, and lymphyocytes on the high side of normal.
But this is, again, all part of living after treatment for cancer. You never see illness the same again. It is not a panicky feeling, though you do worry. And you know, as few parents do, the urgency of getting results in a timely manner. You watch for signs and indications that most parents never think twice about. And it will never go away. There is no known outside range at which B-cell Leukemias have a zero risk for relapsing. It gets less likely over time, but it never completely goes away. You learn to be vigilant – not overreactive, you just pay attention. Because it matters.
We learned things from this. That we were woefully unprepared financially for a crisis of this magnitude. That we are mentally well prepared – we knew within half an hour of the news, just how we would handle it if it were a relapse. We knew within days what our best treatment options would be, and how we’d handle the difficulties that could cause. We knew we’d be ok if it WERE a relapse.
And we learned that four days is far too long to wait for test results. We’ll be using a different lab from now on. One that can determine leukemic blast cells from myelocytes right away.
Alex goes back to the doctor in another week, for a repeat CBC and checkup, to see whether he is still in a decline, or whether he had something going on in the background that he is bouncing back from. So the worst worry is over, but a niggling one remains.
And it probably always will.
An Update on Previous Posts
The experiments are going well, the garden is dead, the classes are thriving, and business is still growing. There… all done. You can go home now.
More detail? Well… If you insist…
Megafamilies and Natural Diabetics are both earning better than before. The forums are hard to get going. People like to post to a busy forum, they shy away from taking the lead. So you have a tidy little catch-22. Nobody posts because nobody posts. So every week or so I email the site members (they DO sign up… they don’t necessarily DO anything once they have, but they do sign up!). I welcome the new ones, give them an idea of the overall membership numbers, and invite them to go out on a limb and get the forums rolling. And I reply any time someone posts. So far the courageous are few.
But the Google income is up. So far up that one of the sites is now making what ALL of my sites used to make. Traffic has not slowed down at all. They’ve been in the new format for a month now, and the traffic is still high – in fact, Megafamilies seems to be particularly high, with a 50% increase over last month, primarily Google traffic. Natural Diabetics has maintained its growth trend.
Our web development class is going well. Five students payed for the whole course at once. One could not afford to do that, so he pays for each class as he goes. He is my bellweather. As long as he is coming back, I know I must not be doing too badly. We teach SEO this week. Last week was a whirlwind tour of images and the web. Kevin continues to film me, and I continue to sound good, but look stupid. Pretty normal.
The University Outreach Coordinator has asked me to do more this spring. Two full courses, plus four smaller classes. That is a lot. They’ll be done in a series of three saturdays for each full course though, instead of spread out through 12 weeks. I don’t know if that will make it easier, or harder. We’ll teach Joomla, and CRELoaded. The curriculum is outlined, but unwritten, so I’ll have a busy few months getting that done. Fortunately the four smaller classes (2 hours each), will be expansions on four of the modules from the full course that I am teaching now. That means the curriculum for them is already 90% finished, I just have to polish them into stand-alone classes.
Contracts keep coming. I have a few appointments each week to meet with prospects, which is about how it needs to be to keep us in shoes and milk and potatoes. Been so busy lately though that I’ve just wanted to sit down and cry a few times. I’d rather be busy than not, but sometimes it does get overwhelming.
My computer developed some dead pixels. Quite a lot, actually. Enough to be a problem. So I’m now working from a brand new HP laptop (it was cheap), which is in need of a RAM upgrade since it is running Vista (I’d have stuck with XP if they’d have given me a choice). After discovering how to get into the hidden Admin account in Vista, and running from that, I’m less frustrated with the OS in general. Still don’t like it, but now I can at least function at a minimal level.
I’ve had trouble transferring things over though, so I’m functioning with the technological equivalent of having one arm tied behind my back. It is certain to be a few more days before I have this thing firing on all cylinders where my personal info archives are concerned.
And this laptop had 40 GB of stuff on it out of the box. I uninstalled about 10 GB, but STILL… THIRTY GIGS, and they called it a “barebones system” as far as software was concerned! They were right…. it has almost nothing on it but Vista and a few games, and HPs stuff. Greedy beggers, aren’t they? The system has two hard drives – I suppose they thought they should make sure both got used?
Pending Growth within the Medicine Bow, Wyoming Region
The name “Medicine Bow” has been known to only a few traditional western fans. It is the fictional site of a book that is renowned as the “first Western” novel – The Virginian, by Owen Wister. It has been the setting of three movies based on that novel, but has never been the SITE of the actual filming.
Recently, the name of Medicine Bow has been bandied about within the government and alternative energy circles. If you Google “Medicine Bow Coal to Diesel”, you’ll find a treasure trove of both factual and speculative information.
DKRW, a relatively new company, is in the development process for a coal to liquids facility which will be located just 10 miles from Medicine Bow. The facility will support a workforce of approximately 300 workers when it is fully functioning (numbers vary according to sources, this is the most often repeated number). Work crews are currently reported as being scheduled to begin construction in the spring of 2008.
The facility will be the first of its kind, and represents freedom from foreign oil, as well as significant advances on the environmental front. It is supported not only by regional government, it has widespread support on the national level. Several other facilities are planned to be built, based on the success or failure of this one. Coal states are watching this one.
Land prices in Medicine Bow are already rising. The last round of property taxes showed a fairly high increase in tax values (nearly double for many homes). Of course, since taxes have been very low here, the increases were not huge by standards elsewhere, but they still ruffled a few feathers.
Medicine Bow has had a depressed housing economy for decades. Where else can you purchase a 3 bedroom home in decent shape for under $100 k? WELL under $100 k. That may change within the next two years though. Even the housing of the work crews will present a challenge in a town that usually has only 4-6 houses for sale at a time, and where finding a rental is as much a matter of luck as it is of timing.
Growth within Carbon County in general is already strong. Housing in the surrounding towns is becoming increasingly difficult to get. The spillover is already affecting the ‘Bow. If a person had planned to purchase land low and sell high, the opportunity is already all but gone. The feeding frenzy is already on, and houses that you could not give away last year are being priced at twice their current value. In a year, they’ll get it.
For now, the small and isolated feeling is preserved. And even with growth that doubles or triples the size of the town, we’ll still be considered unbearably small to most people. When you are starting with an optimistic estimation of 300 people, the anticipated growth still won’t move us beyond “small” or “rural”. Most people in town really just want to regain a small grocery store, and it would take doubling or tripling the town size to make it feasible. It may no longer be an unrealistic goal.
Some of the atmosphere that brings people here will undoubtedly be lost. But it would be lost due to stagnation and neglect if the growth does not occur, and loss due to growth is infinitely preferable to loss due to attrition. Things will change. But we hope to find progress within the change.
Take a look at the town website for more info about Medicine Bow: http://www.medicinebow.org
Network, Network, Network
It wasn’t just about the people who came to our booth and were interested in hiring us. That was really only a small part of the value we received from purchasing a booth at a state-wide business event. I went in with expectations of more than just one advantage, which allowed me to gain a great deal from the event that went far beyond those few potential contracts.
Networking is all about getting to know people, building relationships, and reciprocity. If you have something of value, people will recommend it, but only if they trust you to deliver. Trade events are a good place to meet people who may be interested in what you have. But they can also benefit you in other ways, depending on what your goals are.
You can meet up with people who might be considered your competitors. If you shun them, and treat them like the enemy, you’ve just cut off a potential advantage. If you get to know them, and learn the differences between what you do, and what they do, you may find that cooperation is possible, in a way that benefits you both. For example, two other web design companies at the first event were happy to take our card, with the intent of passing on referrals. They wanted big contracts. We wanted the small ones. We can help one another.
Those two benefits – potential clients, and potential cooperations, are two benefits that nearly every business can gain from networking, and from event participation. There is a third, which will benefit a business if they have goals that go beyond their own business. If you want to change the world, one more benefit is possible.
You can meet people who have the power to help you gain credibility to achieve great things. I’m not a power pusher. I don’t get into the games involving scratching and clawing my way to the top. But I do understand now how knowing the right people can help your business in ways you never dreamed.
I’m trying to define a new niche industry. To do that, I have a two-pronged approach to my business. It includes both DOING the job, in a service business, and TEACHING the job, in an educational environment. To teach it, I need more credibility than I do to just DO it. People with power can help me do that, and can help to grant me the credibility I need. They can refer me, put me in a position of being “the” expert to call on the topics I want to educate people about.
The events we attended did that, to a certain extent. We came to the notice of people who have an agenda of eliminating certain problems. The things we teach help to address some of those issues. In talking to them, once they finally understood the real difference in how we are approaching the industry, we were able to make an impression, and be remembered as the only people doing this one thing. Long term, that will benefit us. It already is on a local and regional basis.
No one else is going to build your business for you. They really don’t care whether you succeed or not, unless you are doing something that will benefit them also. People in power won’t want to help you unless it makes them look good too. You have to have your ducks in a row, you can’t just ride someone else’s coattails to the top. But if you DO have it together, and if you ARE willing to work hard at building a smart business, networking can help you succeed in ways you cannot predict.
The Intellectual Footprint of Your Business
She wasn’t getting it. I could tell that by the way she kept looking at me with this, “so… and this matters to me, why?” look on her face. It should have mattered to her, because my goal was to eliminate one of her problems.
All week I’ve been at trade shows, explaining what I do and where I am going, over and over. Some people get it right away. Some people don’t get it until you really tell them flat out, “I am not trying to just provide a service. I am trying to redefine an industry across the globe.” Then they begin to have a clue how big a thing I am trying to do.
I’ve decided to call it the “intellectual footprint”. And every business, or person, has one.
- Consider Charles Dickens. What did he contribute to the world that was good?
- Think about the safety pin. It forever redefined how we performed emergency clothing repairs.
- The Frosty made people reconsider how they thought about ice cream in a cup.
Are you trying to build a business? Or are you trying to make an impact on more than just your little corner of the world? Why, exactly, are you IN business?
If you are out to change the world, are you documenting what you learn? Are you assembling a means of passing on what you learned to others who may want to follow in your footsteps?
Often, the real difference between someone who owns a business that serves a few people, and someone who owns a business that redefines the way a group of people think about something, is nothing more than the fact that one of them documented their knowledge, and shared the life-changing lessons that they learned. They left an intellectual footprint on the world.
How big are your shoes? Will people know where you’ve trod, not because of how loudly you yelled as you went by, but by what you shared that helped them to do what they do just a little better?
You have the capacity to change the world for good. How do you intend to do that?
Realizing a Dream
My class starts Monday, through the University of Wyoming. I am not TAKING the class, I am teaching it, through their outreach program. I am not a licensed teacher. I have no post-secondary education to speak of (well, a drama course I took at the local community college when I was in highschool, but I don’t think that counts!). So this is a cool thing for me, especially since I was originally approached by them to do a course in web design.
The class was not highly promoted, and we have just a few students taking it. The Outreach Coordinator called today to ask if I still wanted to do it, or if I thought there were too few students. I told him that I’d do it. It is a necessary step for me, I need the experience, and this opportunity will help me polish my courses and add value to them.
Besides, small classes are fun. With web design, when you are building an actual project, you can help the students in a more personal way. The lessons can be adapted to their specific needs instead of just generic. That is cool. They’ll get more out of it.
I’ve done a lot of teaching, but never something like this. I’ve done individual tutoring, and workshop presentations, and short classes. But this one is quite different. 12 classes, each one building on the next, and no supplied curriculum. I had to write it myself. Would have been an overwhelming task if I had not already had so much of it done.
I asked the Outreach Coordinator whether there were enough students to justify the class for the college. They said this class, they’d run anyway, because they do not have a web development degree program, or anyone who teaches it on campus. They want to offer this through the outreach department on a regular basis.
So now I just need to live up to their expectations. I know I have the ability, and the knowledge. I just have to be able to present it in an organized and understandable way.
And I know that I cannot do this without the help of the Lord.
Volunteering When You Don’t Have Time
Somehow I always seem to open my mouth and volunteer when I really DON’T have time to volunteer! But sometimes I just cannot let a job NOT be done.
We are in one of those phases where we have a lot of fish in the pool, sniffing the bait, but nobody is biting. Oh, we have several pending contracts, but we don’t really believe that the money is coming in until it gets here! Web Design is just like that.
I rebuilt my Carry to Term site about two months ago. Stuck it in Joomla. Seemed to have more potential that way, and better options for encouraging people to talk to us and ask for help and support. I stuck a forum in there. It has not been used yet.
A few days ago, a lady who contacted me when I was pregnant with Sidney did so again. She is finishing the book she started then. She’d like more ability to reach people who have received negative prenatal diagnoses too. So it appears that the site that I rebuilt will be needed and used. Kinda cool, since I had just come to the conclusion that I had a site that needed a network of people to run it, and she comes and says she has a network of people with no site to run. Pretty cool how God works those things out.
And then I volunteered to build her a blog and a new site framework to sell the book. I’m sure I’ll find the time to fit it in, but the painting job we are trying to finish just may suffer a bit!
Now, if I can just give away a few more websites… anyone out there ready to raise a hand and shout, “Pick me!”?
Two New Experiments
Well, after making the decision to rebuild Megafamilies and Natural Diabetics, I finally got the job done. The new sites are functioning well, and are two of the best sites I’ve built in a content management system. We’ll see where they go now, since they have the ability to handle much more visitor interaction than the previous structure.
Taking a site out of a static HTML structure and putting it into a CMS is complex. It involves setting up the CMS, then transferring the content in page by page. In this instance, I also had to restructure the site layout for the Diabetes site – it had grown too large for the original simple link structure.
Once that was done, and the site ready to launch, I had to set up redirects for every link – old page to new page. That was not hard, just tedious. But doing that means that when someone tries to visit one of the old pages, they’ll get sent to the new one instead.
Google income dropped slightly during the transition, then picked right back up again. We’ll see if it gets better or worse, and how the changes affect the traffic, and income. I’ve changed sites before, but they have not been ones with strong traffic trends or AdSense earnings.
You can see the results at: http://www.naturaldiabetics.com, or http://www.megafamilies.com.
The Difference Between Privilege and Responsibility
His eyes lit up as the knife was held out to him. His first chance to use the knife to divide something. He eyed the pie carefully, considering how he could cut it into six pieces while still reserving the largest piece for himself. He poised the knife to cut, just a little off center, and then froze as he heard his mother utter these words:
“You have to take the smallest piece.”
Suddenly his entire goal shifted. From the goal of getting more, he now has the goal of being scrupulously accurate! He now has a responsibility to be fair, added to what he thought was merely a privilege! He considers more carefully, and checks all options before he makes the first cut.
He learns more as time goes on, about being the one with the responsibility for the wellbeing of more than just himself. And much of it goes back to those words on the first occasion that he was entrusted with the knife – “You have to take the smallest piece.” He learns that even when he tries his hardest, sometimes inaccuracies WILL happen. And that he must accept the outcome even when there was no fault on his part. Sometimes there are consequences that we don’t intend, that we have to make up for anyway. We musn’t require others to do that for us.
Privilege is often thought of as something ungoverned. It is only as time goes on and we mature that we realize that it comes with a price, and that it must be earned. And that the hidden responsibilities that go along with it are far weightier than we had originally considered.
In business, this marks the difference between true integrity, and the mere appearance of it. The appearance considers only what they perceive that people will notice, while in the background, retaining the thought, “How can I get a bigger piece than they do without making it LOOK like I did it on purpose?”. True integrity means you always take the smaller piece when you were responsible for creating the pieces. That you look out for the interests of your clients, associates, and even your competitors. That the Golden Rule is carried through every level of everything you do.
The result is pretty awesome – customers who come back again and again because they know you will never cheat them. And beyond that, they know that you will consider their needs and situations as carefully as you consider your own. All other things being equal, such a business will always do better than the competition.
Gone to Seed
We planted, and watered, and watered, and watered, and weeded, and watered. And just the squash came up. We watered some more, and replanted, and some lettuce came up. The deer ate it. We put stinky fertilizer around it. The deer left it alone.
This summer was hot. And stormy. For three weeks we had blazing heat. Right about the time we planted, of course. So the seeds got cooked before they could sprout. The soil is clay, so heat just bakes it and the soil holds the warmth.
The zucchini bore fruit. So did the squash. But the squash did not pollinate correctly, so it did not mature. The cucumbers grew, and we had enough cucumbers to eat and give away. Ah… the feeling of wealth that comes when you have something everyone else wants, that you can share!
Finally the beans and more lettuce came up. Along with about 6 beets. And countless tumbleweeds. Not to be outdone by the tumbleweeds, the grass, of course, sprouted and hollered for attention. Grass always does.
It is autumn in Wyoming. It comes early here. The storms are back, and the wind is picking up. The kids are a little less enthusiastic about watering the garden now, so it is not bearing as well. The weeds are attempting to come into their own. We are battling them, but it is a tough battle. And some of the plants want to go to seed. Growth, yes, but not USEFUL growth right now, since we don’t WANT seeds, we want fresh veggies.
Again the comparison to business is too strong to ignore. Have I let it go to seed – have I let it grow into something I did not want, and have no use for, at the expense of something I do need? Have the weeds of discouragement, disorganization, and distraction taken over and sapped the strength from the desired growth?
And if so, what do I do about it? I think it is easier to spot the problems than it is to actually SOLVE them. A plan. Some action. Good action.
Tomorrow WILL be better.
Flash Really Ain’t Bad
You hear it all the time – Flash interferes with SEO, Flash slows down a site, Flash is expensive, Flash won’t benefit most sites it is on. And while all this is true, in many situations, there is another side – that is the wise use of Flash.
Now, let us be plain about just what we are discussing. Part of the confusion about Flash comes down to the fact that people are lumping everything Flash together. There are actually three basic uses that are totally different:
1. Flash INTROS. When a site is created with a doorway or home page that is nothing but Flash. No meaningful text, no useful information other than this “loading” bar, and then a movie which, more often than not, really doesn’t tell you anything helpful. These pages are all but invisible to search engines, and to people with visual disabilities. A double whammy.
2. Flash SITES. Even worse. Like an entire site full of intro pages. Links built in Flash are invisible to search engines and to the visually disabled, or to anyone who does not have the right plugin. In other words, if the person cannot view the site on your terms, it is useless to them. It is also extremely slow, which translates as annoying.
3. Flash ELEMENTS. This is just a box on the page, maybe the header, maybe part of the page lower down, which has an animation in it. Nice for galleries, short visual messages, etc. All of the disadvantages that intros and sites have are eliminated, except for the speed issue. Even that is mitigated, because there are other things on the page for the visitor to see. There is content for the search engines, text for the blind to be able to grab with a text reader, and a potential enhancement to the appeal of the page to everyone else.
Now, that said, it still is not the “best” thing for every site. Most sites we build would not benefit from video animations at this time. Some do – I mean, if you are in a high end market that targets certain personality profiles, then video is a definite enhancement. For others though, it makes no difference, and therefore, cannot be a justifiable expenditure.
To include it in a site, we have to be reasonably certain that it will increase the monetary gain of the site owner – enough to offset the cost of including it. And there is an expense to be considered. Flash element creation requires either specialized skills and software, or simplified software that is purchased on a single site user license basis. So either way, there is going to be a cost. For a few businesses, you can see immediately that the cost would be justifiable. A few are equivocal, and others you can say with certainty that there would be no benefit.
Sites that WOULD benefit:
- Any site selling videos.
- Any site selling video production services.
- Any site selling high end graphic design services.
- Sites promoting highly visual products or services.
- Sites promoting to a market that is impatient and largely visual, such as video gamers.
- Sites selling action related items or services.
- And other sites where motion is a definite enhancement to a sales message.
Sites that might benefit – worth using only if the site owner can afford it:
- Sites selling trendy items.
- Sites selling visually appealing items that are artistic in nature, but not high end.
- Sites catering to teens or college age visitors.
- Sites promoting design services where displaying a range of styles in a single place is helpful.
- Sites selling unique and visually identifiable merchandise.
Sites that are unlikely to benefit from Flash:
- Those selling products that are not easily identifiable through a picture.
- Sites owned by people on an extremely tight budget – they can get more bang for the buck in other ways.
- Sites catering to a frugal crowd – Flash looks expensive, and detracts from the message.
- Sites that target the visually impaired.
- Any site for which there is no strong purpose in the imagery and content of an animated or video clip.
Flash can be a great enhancement, and indeed a good investment for some websites. Of course, it also depends on what you DO with it – whether you are just throwing something in to throw something in, or whether you have a purpose, a plan, and a concept which will actually add to the quality of the site! Assuming it is done well, a certain percentage of sites can benefit from wisely used Flash elements.
And, technology is changing all the time. The standards by which we measure today will certainly change in a year or two. As internet speeds increase, and the low end moves up, we’ll have more options for using more resource intensive elements. As Flash evolves, someone is BOUND to create a means of coding to overcome the accessibility and SEO limitations. Until then though, it pays to understand what the limitations are, and how to work around them in effective ways.
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