VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[cyclometh]

In which I lay out the "rules" (they're more like guidelines, really) for web design as it relates to your VO site:

http://cyclometh.com/2011/04/03/web-design-guidelines-for-your-vo-site-part-on/
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Corey "Vox Man" Snow
http://voxman.net

[bobsouer]

Corey,

Good thoughts. Thank you.
_________________
Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[Scott Pollak]

Corey, as a former web-designer myself, I applaud, appreciate, and agree pretty much with what you posted. Good info, and correct.

Good Gawd it drives me nuts when someone creates their own site and puts something like a red background out there with unreadable blue text, in some bold 40 pt font out there and you're screaming to yourself "Can't they tell you can't read this and that it looks AWFUL?!!"

The one point I would raise my eyebrows at is the overall view of Flash sites:

You say: Not everyone uses Flash.
- I suppose so, but they surely must be in a minuscule minority these days. I honestly don't know anyone personally who doesn't have a Flash player installed on their computers. To me, this is the web equivalent of saying that there are still people out there who need to put leaded gas in their cars. Yep. I reckon there are. One or two.

You say: Apple iPads and iPhones cannot view your site.
- Good point. And valid. Knowing Steve Jobs, my bet is this is a problem soon to be corrected by Apple. I don't know how much potential business this may be losing for those of us with Flash-driven sites, and we certainly don't want to lose ANY potential business, but so far I'm still getting a ton of brand-new, out-of-the-blue business from folks who find me via a Google search and then listen to my demos. So I have to think most folks are still doing their initial searching from a computer or laptop.

You say: Flash is not accessible. Anyone who uses assistive software, a screen reader or some other mechanism to browse the web because they have poor or no eyesight will be totally unable to use your site. And they won’t be back.
- Good point, and one I hadn't even considered. And not to downplay the importance of this, but again, wouldn't this portion of the client base be potentially exceptionally small? And - again - not to say that these potential clients AREN'T as important as any others, but we're not going to be able to appeal to EVERY potential client out there, so wouldn't it be wise to appeal to the overall broadest range of potential clients, while also presenting a highly professional and cutting-edge site?

You say: Flash does not respect the client. The heart of HTML is the concept of separation of content from presentation. That’s why instead of “bold”, you use “strong” and instead of “italic” you use “emphasis”. By describing the content instead of laying it out, clients (browsers) can appropriately present the content according to the user’s preferences or needs. One of the most egregiously bad things Flash-based sites do is simply not resize when the browser is scaled down. If I resize a properly-designed site’s window, the content will be laid out appropriately (within reason). Not so with a Flash-based site, which will simply either float in the middle of your browser on a high-resolution system, or clip past the edges on a lower-resolution one.
- Yet another great point and one that I won't argue with, since I have no argument with it!

You say: You can’t open links in a new tab or window.
- Good point, because you don't want a site visitor to jump OUT of your site to an outside link. You want YOUR site/window to still be there. My solution: I have no links to anything outside my site. I'm not sure why people put outside links on their sites. Yes, I'm on Facebook, but I have no desire to drive my clients there. I have no desire to put a link to a P2P site on MY site, to send a client over so they can hear my competition. That just makes NO sense to me.

You say: You’re adding load that didn’t need to be. A Flash animation must be hosted in a runtime that takes CPU and memory resources on your client. Slowing your (potential) customer’s system down for no good reason is a bad idea.
- Yes. Thus you need to optimize your Flash site, scale it down, don't get too fancy, and aim for optimum load time. I totally agree with you here, although with today's so-much-faster computers and generally faster internet, it's not nearly the issue it was a few years ago.

You say: Flash can crash.
- Can't ANY site crash, though? I often try to come to the vo-bb and find it's down, and it's a non-flash site. Servers crash, internet goes down. It happens.

Again, though, Corey, these are just nits I'm picking. I really appreciate the well-thought-out time and expertise you're sharing in the blog and hope all v/o artists read it and take it to heart.
_________________
Scott R. Pollak
Clients include Pandora, NPR Atlanta, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Humana, Publix, UPS, AT&T, HP, Xerox and more.

www.voicebyscott.com

[cyclometh]

Scott- I'm not calling anyone out or anything like that. Like I said at the top of the post, not everyone will agree with me, but that's OK. I'm not the be-all and end-all of web design, and I offer my opinions only and as others have noted, those are pretty easy to come by.

You'd be surprised how many people don't use or disable Flash, though, or can't use it at all. I know a few people who disable it as a matter of course for security, privacy or performance reasons- it really can be a CPU hog and it's amazing how much less obnoxious your browsing experience can be without Flash-based ads.

Anecdote: When I built my current system in August of 2009, there was no Flash support for 64-bit Windows 7 systems. It was quite a while- well into 2010, I believe- before the plugin was available. If I absolutely had to view a Flash-enabled site I had to jump through extra hoops to do so. Usually, I simply skipped it. My experience was being held hostage to Adobe's development schedule, which would always lag any new operating system or platform.

I also wouldn't expect Flash support on the iPad anytime soon- actually I wouldn't expect it ever. Steve Jobs and Apple are clearly actively hostile to Flash and have made no bones about it. There's a few hacks and as that let you view Flash on the iPad/iPhone but you won't find it as core functionality, probably ever.

The entire issue may be moot as HTML5 will be a viable alternative to Flash-based websites, leaving Flash where it should be (in my opinion), an add-on as opposed to a platform. In fact, there's already as that convert Flash to HTML5 for the iPad.

Also, I believe that it's important to remember that we're not our own customers. We should not measure their expectations by our own usage patterns and knowledge. If my experience with the kind of people who I expect to be my customers is accurate, I'm best served by making their experience as expeditious as possible.

However- in the end, if it's not broken don't fix it. Thanks for your feedback on my post, it is appreciated.
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Corey "Vox Man" Snow
http://voxman.net

[Monk]

I guess my site passes muster..

Although I'm working on an HTML5 mp3 player. I have a Java Script that should work, just need to spend an afternoon installing it.
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Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me...

www.monksvoice.com

[Gregory Best]

Scott, a lot of people these days are looking at sites on devices other than a PC or even a desktop computer. No flash on my Blackberry. None on I-phone, I-pad, ect. Using flash excludes many potential viewers.
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Gregory Best

greg@gregorybest.com

[Lisa]

Great resource, Corey. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
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Lisa

[Mike Sommer]

HTML5 is the future. Adapt and adapt early.
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The Blog:
http://voiceoveraudio.blogspot.com/

Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.