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PunBB Forums → General discussion → Most evil technology on the web?
OK, what do you think is the most evil technology on the web?
My vote is for Flash - anyone who writes a flash script without a "skip the flash" button should be (well, I was going to say "hung, drawn and quartered", but that's a bit extreme!) made to sit down in front of a computer on a 56kbps line and wait for the most bloated, useless piece of flash animation to download while their dinner gets cold and their beer warms up!!!!
-Embedded midi music, although less of an issue recently still very annoying
-Audible advertisements of any kind(IE: Zap the fly, punch the clown etc)
Flash, Flash and did I mention Flash?
I think it has it's place but whenever I hit a site that's totally Flash based, I hit the back button immediately.
I don't think flash is evil in itself, but the way it's usually used is just terrible 
I use flash myself from time to time, when appropriate of course 
I'm not sure Flash is the worst, but it's definitely high on the list.
-Embedded midi music, although less of an issue recently still very annoying
-Audible advertisements of any kind(IE: Zap the fly, punch the clown etc)
i agree with jingoglia
Music or sound effects in general tops my list. I always have music on and when a website starts playing, I just leave immediately 
Exception is where the sole purpose of the site is to play music/video, like youtube etc.
Flash is alright with me as long as it is non-interactive. Navigation is Flash is pure evil. I kind of like Flash video though.
Die Flash, die !
Shockwave, active x should go to hell as well.
Flash. Overused JavaScript is also bad.
idem
Ehehe, it's no coincidence, this is punbb forums. It looks likes all of us are web 1.0 mates eheheh.
I myself think webmasters/designers should stick with simple server side scripting and simple html output sooo much more often instead of just using javascript, flash, whatever all the time.
Well, there is no such thing as web 2.0. It's the exact same web, just more people have learned to code for it (in the broadest meaning of the word) and use it.
Alot of people really hate flash, but it does have its place.
yes, any site that uses flash as navigation should offer a non-flash alternative, but I also think that as things like AJAX become more popular, we'll see less and less flash stupidness.
However flash does do some really nice things, an example is the youtube style flash players. I simply love them, i've always hated the embeded windows media/realplayer/quicktime players and the flash streaming video setup is quite nice.
And I absolutely love flash for making demonstration videos, mostly due to my job, but being able to record my screen and throw it up (with comments) on my job's website makes my life tons easier.
I vote for DHTML, use of wrong color schemes, etc and overuse of JS.
People if you think that Flash is banners and animations and *nothing* more, then I'm really *sorry* for you.
Have you ever heard of Rich Internet Appplications? Don't you want to have one easy tool for building cross-platform (including mobile devices) web applications, with free SDK available powered by ActionScript 3 (OOP, strong typed java like language) and MXML.
Have a look at this examples.
Stop looking at stupid banners and realize flexibility and easiness that Flash platform gives you.
Rickard, navigation should be as easy and transparent as possible, that's right, but how do you imagine navigation for creative website, about art or games, movies and many others? Just dry html list, no? Check out this amazing use of flash animation and interactivity http://fubon.co.uk/ it's worth seeing even on slow connection.
If you don't like some Flash work in 99% of cases blame *developer/designer*, not technology!
Flash is one of the greatest thing that has happened to web ever!
I vote for DHTML, use of wrong color schemes, etc and overuse of JS.
People if you think that Flash is banners and animations and *nothing* more, then I'm really *sorry* for you.
Have you ever heard of Rich Internet Appplications? Don't you want to have one easy tool for building cross-platform (including mobile devices) web applications, with free SDK available powered by ActionScript 3 (OOP, strong typed java like language) and MXML.
Have a look at this examples.Stop looking at stupid banners and realize flexibility and easiness that Flash platform gives you.
Rickard, navigation should be as easy and transparent as possible, that's right, but how do you imagine navigation for creative website, about art or games, movies and many others? Just dry html list, no? Check out this amazing use of flash animation and interactivity http://fubon.co.uk/ it's worth seeing even on slow connection.
If you don't like some Flash work in 99% of cases blame *developer/designer*, not technology!
Flash is one of the greatest thing that has happened to web ever!
No. Just...no.
Also, I think you're being more than just a little inconsistent here by telling people to blame developers instead of the Flash tech. itself, yet at the same time you're doing exactly that to things like Javascript & DHTML (which in itself isn't really a technology, but rather a method of using several other technologies).
Another thing that strikes me with your post is that you're just about saying that no website can be creative if it doesn't use Flash, although I do hope that's just due to your English language-skills. If not, then you really need to get around the web some more.
In my opinion, Flash has its uses, but navigation is absolutely not one of them. It's terrible for people having poor eyesight (or several other disabilities requiring the use of alternative browser solutions), not to mention the fact that it offers few, if any, fall-back solutions should you not have Flash installed. Oh and another thing, have you ever tried browsing a Flash site on a handheld device? Yeah, well I have and it's more than just a slight annoyance, not to mention the bandwidth costs should you use a cell-phone to connect and the device actually supports Flash.
P.S: In what way do you consider color schemes to be a technology?!
I wouldn't call Flash very cross-platform...
One of the main reasons I dislike Flash is the trouble I would have to go through as a Linux user. I have gotten Flash working in Firefox (which I hardly ever use nowadays) on my Gentoo AMD64 box, but I'm not even going to bother going through all the trouble again for Konqueror. The problem is Adobe not releasing the source code or even working binaries for 64-bit Linux. This also means that you, as a developer, are most likely forced to use Adobe's expensive software since they are the only party who hold the specs for Flash and who can ship a 100% working implementation of design tools for the Flash platform. (This generally applies to almost any proprietary software out there.)
If you don't like some Flash work in 99% of cases blame *developer/designer*, not technology!
You are right. No developer should ever rely on a proprietary technology that doesn't have a working implementation for other than a couple of proprietary platforms. I personally don't mind what operating systems people use, but I dislike developers who don't bother making a website or software work on other than the browser/OS/* they use. It's especially important on the Web, which is meant to be accessible from any platform, including mobile phones, PDAs, etc. regardless of what operating system or browser they are running. Developers should be more interested in making things accessible rather than making them "look good" or "interactive". It's possible to make accessible and really good-looking websites without relying on some technology like Flash. I personally feel that "interactivity" is highly overrated on the Web and I prefer basic (X)HTML pages where I can find the information I'm looking for easily and don't need to figure out why the Back button doesn't work on some Flash page as it does on all other websites.
Just talking about my personal experiences with Flash, sorry for the ranting.
One of the main reasons I dislike Flash is the trouble I would have to go through as a Linux user. I have gotten Flash working in Firefox (which I hardly ever use nowadays) on my Gentoo AMD64 box, but I'm not even going to bother going through all the trouble again for Konqueror.
Yeah, my laptop has an AMD64 chip and Flash isn't supported on the 64bit platform.
To add to Linux woes, though Flash Player 9 beta is better, my processor would go haywire on Flash laden sites. I ended up installing an extension on Firefox so that Flash wouldn't play unless I clicked on it. I could see my temps rising on the motherboard when surfing certain sites, quite awful experience.
CodeXP, I understand you, look,
you're just about saying that no website can be creative if it doesn't use Flash, although I do hope that's just due to your English language-skills.
Of course I didn't want to say that, using Flash isn't obligatory for building creative site or whatever. For designers Flash is just another cool technology that you can have fun with.
For people with disabilities Flash supports alternative text for screen readers.
Oh and another thing, have you ever tried browsing a Flash site on a handheld device?
Maybe that site wasn't designed for viewing on something other that desktop?
I've created several simple games and flickr photo search application for Flash Lite and tested them on mobile phones, and it wasn't that bad
P.S: In what way do you consider color schemes to be a technology?!
I just wanted to say that I hate to read red text on green background, etc, it's not tech, it's bad taste
All sites should be designed for viewing with any browser on any platform. That's why there are things like stylesheets to separate textual content from graphical details. Which is one of the main reasons why I prefer PunBB over the other forum software out there.
Jarkko, you are not forced to buy anything to develop flash applications, just go to Adobe's site and download free SDK with AS compiler and use editor or IDE of your choice to write AS3 and MXML code.
Actually several days ago Adobe has contributed code (135 KLOC) from ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2) to Mozilla Foundation's Tamarin project which goal is to implement a high-performance, open source implementation of the ECMAScript 4th edition (ES4) lang specification.
That means in future we'll be able to share algorithms and libraries between browser with it's own DOM and Flash with it's media oriented DOM. It is a little step but, standardization is always good
Just try to forget about that "interactivity" (we aren't designers after all, right?) and look closer at Flash platform and opportunities that it gives to web developer, of course there are ugly things made with Flash, it is the cost of popularity.
About back button in Flash: this problem isn't problem for several years by now! There are hundreds of tutorials for begginer flash developers describing how to enable back/forward buttons and history in browser, but many of them are just to lazy to implement this. Flash is going to desktop along with traditional HTML and AJAX/JS, try googling Apollo.
So, I wish you only best experience with whatever technology you are using, especially with Flash 
I think it has it's place but whenever I hit a site that's totally Flash based, I hit the back button immediately.
FACT!
Check out this amazing use of flash animation and interactivity http://fubon.co.uk/
Proved the point very rapidly... It dont even work properly... lol
Ok if you want an amazing flash site... then I like this one http://leoburnett.ca/
BUT!! This is a gimmick. I show this to my IT friends about how sites should not be made. Eventhough it works (better than your example) and is so interactive... its not the future.
Many examples in the world show better use of normal PHP, JS, HTML etc... Plus the good ones have full degradation so is fully compliant. Flash is just a gimmick... and I think you will find many agree. Check out digg.com for the moaning about how MTV has been re-produced with much flash... I am pretty sure I did not see many positive comments lol.
First article when searching for Apollo http://www.flashguru.co.uk/apollo-flash … e-browser/
So wait a sec... Who will this benefit?
http://fubon.co.uk/ - works just right, check you flash player version. What do you exactly mean by "don't work properly"?
Yes, sites made entirely with flash isn't future.
I'm talking about *web apps* that connect to various remote services, etc , *not* about sites. Normal HTML sites is always better for distribution of mainly textual information to people.
If you have about 10 minutes go and watch screencast of building a simple Flex app with Flex Builder. Ant then decide for yourself.
If you're talking about web 2.0, I'm sorry to disappoint you.
Web 2.0 is developed by people on linux, which, although 'compatible' with flash, (and some people on 64 bit, you know, like me) doesn't really hang to tight with it. Noooo, god no. Flash is also far slower than ajax and javascript and java and even php(!!)
I can't use flash if I want to, and frankly, I don't care, because if I can't right click on a link and control where I want it to open and see what I'm clicking and be able to save the page and bookmark it and stuff, I don't care.
I don't want to have loading times, I don't want noscript saying "BLOCKED SCRIPTS" on every page, I don't want sites where all the content is in flash and I have to wait for the 'pretty transitions' to come into play to see my goddamn content!
No, my site is simple xhtml and css. :s
what do you mean by slow? Like in any other language or thechnology anyone can write "slow" code, an infinite loop or a very heavy function that will waste systen resources, that doesn't mean that AVM is slow, look at one of my previous posts,
part of code from Flash AVM will be used to make JS in FireFox *faster*.
My vote has to go for this lovely mouse cursor:
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicinde … strail.htm
I add it to all of my clients websites but for some reason they dont approve
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