Brady J. Frey

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Flash is a joke

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Thanks Uncle Steve, for telling the rest of the world what professionals in this industry have known for a while… flash is a joke. A cute inside joke where inexperienced designers jump to control the page with company scripted applications, driven and led by the needs of what the company, not the community wants. Flash has always either been a disaster of destroying the open web for accessibility and integration, or a contender for web applications in the same footing as Java. About the only thing I like about flash is the delivery of video content, and simply because of it’s enforced marketshare.

Mark Pilgrim said it best:

Sigh. I used to have the strength to argue against such foolishness. Nowadays I’m reduced to nothing more than Grey’s-Anatomy-esque catchphrases. Seriously? Seriously? Do I really have to explain why this is a bad idea? Again?

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5 Reader Comments::
  1. 1 John Merrifield says:

    Dude, your website looks like shit – I don’t care who the hell you’ve worked for. Obviously you don’t like flash because you don’t know how to use it. Maybe stop reading books about religion, Chinese, and othersubjects and pick up a book on ActionScript programming. Do you know how much you can do with AS3? You’re an ignorant moron and I can’t believe you’ve been so successful at whatever it is you do.

  2. 2 Brady J. Frey says:

    Thanks for the honest opinion John, I appreciate it, and I respect it!

    Actually I’m quite experienced in ActionScript (and yes, much AS3), just as much as I am JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP and Intermediate I’d say in Python and Ruby. ActionScript isn’t a mystery to me, and it’s not an end all to web development as you’ll learn. If you looked through my portfolio (or looked at some of the older work for Spider Ball and Kamalaspa), you’d see a few examples of advanced ActionScript used for marketing and advertising purposes.

    Flash is a fantastic tool for things like Slideshow Pro, youtube… a tool, not an end all website that’s a self contained environment. This isn’t just something we spout as evangelical rhetoric, it comes from years of working with customers on usability from Jakob Neilson to, well, even the W3 itself.

    The weaknesses of flash are apparent in your website as well; and ironically, we must have a technical divide, I look at your print and branding work as quite good, but your website & typography is entry level (the logo in a mouth still has be a bit scared), and something I’d expect from my Junior Designers. You’re using Invalid, Outdated code, Audio options at the bottom (thankfully you’re not autoloading that for me), I can’t bookmark individual pages, I can’t search for you (since your content is self contained in a proprietary language, even though flash has opened up to Google, it’s still far locked into a closed environment)… what position do you have to base talent on the web, when you should be looking to us for inspiration and guidance?

    So we’re at a pleasant place. You say I’m an ignorant moron- fair enough, I like a bit of a challenge, although I’m of the mind ignorant is highly overused now a days for dramatic flair (seriously, complete ignorant moron for my view on a piece of technology?)- but that comes of the opinion that my web-fu is weak and that I’m inexperienced with Flash.

    To me, I’ve moved away from Flash; it was holding me and my clients back, as I’m sure it is you. I look at your site as a hold over from the late 90′s, when we were still thinking print design is web design, and knew very little of how real code works in the world. I look at you as inexperienced in my industry, and not as an industry professional in the web.

    So… flash is a joke. A joke for those of us in the industry who’ve done enough good work to know what quality is, and should be. It’s a joke because inexperienced users defend it until, well, they grow up and learn more about how the web works.

    Flash is a tool to compliment your work, but it’s not a replacement for the web. You should fix your coding errors, and build a better site – I’ll be waiting here for the followup until then!

  3. 3 John Merrifield says:

    I did that website like 3 years ago and haven’t updated it yet because I don’t need too. I’m busy working on other projects right now and starting a new company, and I get plenty of flash work. You probably don’t know more about flash than me, although you are very good at making yourself seem like an expert even though you are not. You’re like one of those fish that puff up to look bigger. I never do that with myself. But bottom-line I still think your website looks like shit. You can’t deflect that criticism by criticizing my old site, but nice try.

    It sounds arrogant to me to for you to say flash is a joke. Even a moron would have to admit that, so that’s why I called you a moron. I don’t think you really know that much but you sell yourself as this total web expert guy. Whether you know more than me is besides the point.

    100 percent of the flash work I do never hits my portfolio and I send examples out as links and I don’t use my website as a big marketing tool because I don’t have too. It serves it’s purpose regardless, as I still get freelance work, and if I wanted to I could list websites I’ve worked on recently that are better than yours, and others you’ve worked on, but I’m just not gonna, because you will start critiquing them too, and I don’t need the aggravation from you.

    Hope you didn’t waste too much of your time critiquing my old website. If you do that with everyone who thinks your new website looks like shit, you must be a very busy boy.

  4. 4 Brady J. Frey says:

    Good to hear from you again John!

    I’ve been doing this for a long time; I work as an in house Art Director for a large business in San Francisco as you can read from my portfolio and biography on this site. All of my work is public and available for criticism, and I welcome it.

    No puffing needed, this is a ‘portfolio’… and a portfolio is about displaying your experience and talent. Again, if you need any help or further details about the issue, please feel free to ask!

    Unfortunately, though, you’re telling me my stuff sucks… but you’re not telling me why it sucks, and you’re not showing me your (current) talented work. You can’t show examples (no other links form your Linkedin or your personal site, since you say those are dated), and although you’ve worked on your site ‘over 3 years ago’, it’s dated 2009 in the footer (and that’s not dynamically generated text).

    Regardless, those of us in the Industry still see Flash as a joke; if you think differently, I welcome seeing some examples to change my opinion otherwise. Best of luck to you John, Happy Holidays!

  5. 5 John Merrifield says:

    Fair enough. And I really like your design work. I never said that stuff sucks. You’re awesome at design and marketing, but I just don’t like the way your site looks aesthetically, and I think you can do better, just like I can do better with my site and I’m working on that.

    Perhaps I got a little annoyed with the “joke” thing, because as a Flash developer, I can’t stand people who say stuff like that. I know you didn’t write it, but you kind of ran with it, and I was like, “C’mon man – are you for real? Flash is a joke?”

    -J

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