[WEB4LIB] Re: flash image on our home page

[Richard L. Goerwitz III]

"Barbara R. Paciotti" wrote:

> I have at least a dozen books on my shelf about web design and
> they all say the most important thing is KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER.

Just because the customer has the capability of displaying Flash
pages doesn't mean that he or she is best served by Flash images.
These are two different issues.  Often confused.

Remember that library pages are there to help users find infor-
mation.

Flash slows down that process.

Flash also rarely enhances patrons' ability to get at the infor-
mation libraries are in the business of providing.

Some libraries actually do user testing.  They give patrons a 
set of tasks and then see how long it takes the patrons to com-
plete them (if they can, in fact, complete them - and do so 
correctly).  Typical tasks might include finding and locating
information on hours of operation, getting an email address or two
for the reference desk, or locating an online reference.  I have
not done testing like this with Flash.  If you do, I'd really be
shocked if Flashed helped you out in any significant way, espe-
cially with the increased load times.

There is also the question of your own internal resources.

It's very easy to throw up a website using whatever technology
you might have on hand.  But do you want to maintain a website
so designed?  Will collaborative work be feasible?  Will a con-
sistent look and feel be easy to implement?  Will it migrate
easily as you shift and upgrade your hardware and software plat-
forms?

You will find that proprietary technology has many hidden costs.
And these costs don't increase linearly as the complexity of 
your website increases.

Worse yet, many libraries have mandates to fulfill (ADA compli-
ance being the biggest).  By using Flash, you're committing your-
self to parallel development tracks, one using Flash, and having
no hope of ADA compliance, and the other being ADA compliant.

To summarize:

There's a lot more to consider here than the simple question of
whether your users have Flash installed or not.  There's the is-
sue of ADA compliance, of hidden costs, of maintenance, of longer
load times, and of whether the extra Flash toys are actually
worth, in terms of site usability, the extra work you put into
them.

Again, to reiterate in slightly different terms what I've said be-
fore, Librarians are uniquely well-positioned to understand these
issues (i.e., issues of ADA compliance, data format lifetime,
maintainability, etc.).  They also tend to have a keen sense of
why it's important, in general, to separate actual content from
how that content is displayed (very hard with tools like Flash).

My guess is that people who either lack understanding of these is-
sues, or worse yet, have a knee-jerk averse reaction to them, have
not really immersed themselves in the whole growing fields of
XML, metadata, archival formats.  Nor have they dealt with the
problems of maintaining growing, active websites through many
hardware and development cycles.  In order to work with websites
of any reasonable size, you have to grapple with these issues.

If you have a tiny website geared for a restricted audience, and
you have no ADA compliance issues, and lots of time to devote to
playing around, then you may be able to get away with things like
Flash.  Otherwise, think twice.

If you are managing technical people who argue in favor of Flash,
think about hiring a good technical consultant to come in and
give them some training.

-- 

Richard Goerwitz                               richard at Goerwitz.COM
tel: 401 438 8978