Day: 13 December 2004

Is there a word called flashify? If not, maybe there should be…

I’m thinking of the process of turning a web page og web site in (X)HTML/XML into a site using Macromedia Flash. And the reason I’m thinking of that process, is the possibility of doing it myself. OK, not completely; just some elements – flashify light, maybe.

The part I’m pondering if I’ll change is one important part of this site: The “moon base menu” on the main page, which is the entrance point to the different areas. It needs to be updated in some way no matter what.

I know, there is the question of accessibility, too – and I won’t sacrifice that aspect on the altar of fanciness. There are three possibilities as I see it now:

1. Directing flash-users to a page with the flash menu, and the rest getting a text or javascript menu as it is now.
2. Include the flash menu on the page for the flash users, and text/javascript for the rest
3. Just have a fancy flash menu – and a simpler text-menu in addition. Styled with CSS, of course.

Just sending people a flash-menu just because they’re able to see it, doesn’t mean they prefer it. So there must be a choice – and to avoid having them choose every time, utilise a cookie. (Hopefully they’ll accept cookies.) I’ll probably go for the second method – including the menu in the page – should I go for that solution and offer two different versions.

But I’m also tempted to just offer both flash and text. Doing it right, it doesn’t need to get an unneccessary double-up feeling. While the text links would offer a quick wayto just get where they want, flash could offer descriptions and details of the various choices – and maybe even extra bits, like flash animations. Or something.

To be honest, at the moment the latter option seems most attractive to me. I’ll have to give this some thought.