Slick Web Sites: SoFake

Looking at their portfolio, I liked the "Facing New York" site...nice look. Didn't like the fact that it started playing music automatically though. Considering that many people surf the web while listening to music, sites need to stop doing this!

The site for "Amplifier" pissed me off. The description looked intruiging, and I wanted to find out more about it, but the looping Flash "interview" video somehow maxed out my 1.8Ghz G5, and I had to "force quit" the browser, thus losing the other pages I had open. Oh, and if you're going to have video of people talking about your company, choose people who can speak! That, combined with the "trashy" design style, (which works for the Facing New York site, but not here), left me with not a very good impression.

I am soo tired of flash websites. Webdesigners have to wake up and stop the excessive use of flash on various websites. Flash takes time to load, the usability of flash-based websites is horrific at best and it eats cpu-power.
You can make all kinds of great effects with flash, but in the end, it all comes down to how well a site performs in terms of usability and ability to provide information. MTV is an excellent example of a flash website that doesn’t work…well…it works, but the performance is really poor and the information I seek, could be provided in half the time if flash weren’t used. And what about the new darling on the web…Flickr…try saving an image from a Flickr gallery…you can’t…at least not easily.

I do NOT need smooth sliding plates, cubes, oscillating colours and what have we. It’s fine if you’re trying to convince a employer to hire you and to show off, but flash has got no place on “non-artsy fartsy” websites (nothing wrong with artsy fartsy websites!)…we want information and we want ‘em now!
A survey done a year ago showed that 80% of consumers hated flash intros. Imagine how many hate complete sites done with flash…oh my.

The sliding plates and cubes on flash websites has always (and very fitting) reminded me of the small cube seen in “Hellraiser” that, when pressed correctly, slides and turns, and in the end opens the gates to hell…hmmm

Really well done (fast-loading and non-annoying) Flash gets attention, and it brings revenue dollars.

Yes, the good flash work out there has brought a whole host of imitators and self-indulgent "animators" with their intros.

But when flash is done well and right, it draws people in. It makes them interested. We're beyond the days of "just making something move to look cool". Designers like myself must weigh the cost/benefit of adding flash to a site. When it's done wrong there is a price, but when it's done right there is a huge huge benefit. It makes sites stand out above the rest of boring, static HTML pages.

I sat on the SoFake site MatthewMahon.com (which is very similar to amplifier) for close to an hour watching all the funny little videos. Try creating this kind've interest with your boring static HTML pages. Gooood luck.

Firstly, Flash is quite difficult to learn from scratch and if you are hoping to create something of interest, chances are you need to eat sleep and breathe it every day (including sundays and wednesdays).

My thoughts on this matter are, If you come across a decent website with some Flash content then embrace it! Obviously the above posts that mock the use of Flash are authored by Microsoft lovers who care little for aesthetics and design and are more at home on whitepages.com than sofake.com

Anyway, I wish that my internet baking interface was Flash driven and that I could drag and drop little bank notes from one account to another.

Anyway 2, Get rooted all of yas.

Without being OTT and too fancy this is a good example of a decent functional build and well designed in every essence. http://www.twist-media.com