» uk-netmarketing: roundup: 02-06-2000

The best tools for the job
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - June 2, 2000

The tussle between those who want graphical wizardry overriding concerns about the actual usability of a website tend to be ignited by pretty much any discussion of Flash.

Zipping over some of the more gory details, Stewart Dean found some useful analogies with other web software, "... sometimes the best generic tool is not good for your job. You can also get the right tool, like Vignette's content management tool, and then use it totally wrong - meaning it can only serve 100 people at time instead of the huge amounts it could if it's properly set up. There are also platform / solution bigots who, even before the problem is properly spec’ed, will already know they are going to use server x with database y and content management system z. The best solution isn't always a sun box with oracle for example."

So, what is the main drawback of using Flash? For this discussion, Peter Borg summed up the argument for many on the list, "I find any site that uses flash for navigation a real pain. Invariably I want to revisit the site to get to a piece of information I saw before, which I couldn't bookmark as it was a flash animation. Consequently it takes several minutes to navigate back to it through all those transitions that were lovely and pretty and cool first time around but subsequently downright bloody annoying (I'm being restrained)."

And of course the Boo saga continues. I suppose it would have been too optimistic for a company to burn through $80-130m (depending on who you read/believe) and expect the story to quieten down after a couple of weeks. The latest twist was a Computer Weekly story that Boo may be suing their suppliers.

Jon Enser responded, "A slightly misleading tagline - the story says suppliers in the [metaphorical] dock. When something like boo happens, the finger of course gets pointed to all those around it. The liquidators' main job is to get what they can out of the wreckage for the creditors. It would need them to have a pretty certain case to justify spending any of the money they do recover on legal action against suppliers. Chances are that would be throwing good money after ...oh, but boo did that already"

Unfortunately, some of those suppliers haven’t yet removed Boo from their websites’ press section, as Paul Youlten pointed out, "Organic need to clean up their press office more carefully. The only reference to boo is hidden in the notice about their new London office."

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