[WEB4LIB] Re: flash image on our home page

[Jeff Remley]

In defense of whether or not to use Flash movies in a web page, I 
have to say it definitely has it's places.  I set up a training manual 
for new students to the Kent State Library Circulation and Stacks 
departments a year or so ago and, as a bonus, decided to add 
Flash movies.  While in part this would hopefully help maintain 
interest while the new students read through parts of the training 
manual, the interactivity of a Flash movie really helped the new 
students understand the Library of Congress rules.

You can see the Training Manual at 
http://www.library.kent.edu/circ_tm/ .  Click on the yellow 
"Circulation Map" in the upper left corner, and then scroll down to 
"LC Test Area" for the training section.  This was a last minute 
addition, so we didn't really plan it into the initial navigation scheme 
(which is why it's stashed under "Circulation Map").  Click on the 
blue arrow at the bottom of the page for a review of LC, and then 
the textual link at the bottom of the page to go on to the tests, 
which increase in difficulty with each page.

While the site needs some updates, the LC training has been quite 
popular with our new students.  We've decided a future version 
definitely needs scoring for the LC tests - right now we don't know if 
a student is just guessing their way through the tests.  Improved 
legibility (on smaller monitors) will also be worked on in a future 
version.  We know this training manual is for use here at the 
library, so downloading times and plug ins aren't a major issue, but 
the file sizes really haven't been too bad.

As a freelance web developer on the side, I've had clients that I've 
talked out of using Flash on their sites - I agree that it's not always 
an added perk but more of a distraction or something to slow the 
download.  

-Jeph Remley

Multimedia/Web Developer
Library Systems
Kent State University

(330) 297-6903