# should i switch to a html site (currently have a flash bludomain)due to iPad/iPod use



## pashphotography (Jan 27, 2012)

Hi everyone, 

I'm a frequent reader (don't even log in) but I finally have a specific question that someone hasn't already asked before.

With the dawn of iPads, iPhones etc etc my flash site by bludomain isn't working up to snuff and I'm beginning to feel the need to make the change to a website with at least an html 'backend' or just go straight html.  

I book a fair amount of weddings and portrait business from my site  ~ i live in remote Nova Scotia so my site has served me well.  I like bludomain's look and feel and it's just been easy for me (contrary to some of the poor people with horror stories out there).

What do you guys suggest?  I know that bludomain has a new HTML 5 site called emmet they are advertising ~ I'm not really sure what my other options are in the same price range.

I am open to any input and advice.  I don't like paying a 'monthly' fee - I prefer to pay a one time lump sum and then just deal with hosting myself.

Any advice is appreciated!

Cheers from snowy Nova Scotia


----------



## 12sndsgood (Jan 27, 2012)

i personally would problaby go with a non-flash site myself. my wife happens to own an ipad and when i was searchign thru photography sites id hit a flash site and when i did i'd just move on. now a few did pique my intrest enough that when i was on my computer i looked them up. but i know some would have lost out just because id move on to the next one. i wouldn't think it would hurt you to have your site available to everyone out there. just makes sence to me that the more people who can see it give you more of a chance.


----------



## pashphotography (Jan 27, 2012)

This is good advice 12sndsgood ~ I appreciate you taking your time to write me.  I must admit, we just got an iPad and I did the same thing when looking at a few websites. It's important to put yourself in the mindset of the consumer rather than the 'artist/business person' point of view (which is hard to do sometimes). 

Thank you again for taking the time to respond!


----------



## NickA (Jan 27, 2012)

You can achieve the same results now with HTML 5 and Javascript (and some JQuery, which is Javascript).  There are ready made templates out there you can start with if you don't want to design your site from scratch.  The nice thing about HTML 5 is it's favorable to mobile devices as well.  So the page will render nicely on a 3.7" screen on a phone to you 9.7" iPad or one of the many sizes of Android tablets.


----------



## kamerageek (Jan 27, 2012)

I've never been a big fan of flash myself. The overhead can be a significant usability issue for people with slower connections and it's a non-starter for the iDevice set. If broader reach is your concern, then a plain HTML site is probably the right answer. HTML 5 support is pretty ubiquitous among the top browsers, but the level of support is still questionable in some cases. Your mileage may vary.


----------



## NickA (Jan 27, 2012)

Just some more of my .02...  Please don't have music playing when I hit your site.  And if you do, give me a way to quickly turn it off.  And please no bright white text on a black background.  And if you are going to have a blog, try and keep it updated.  Nothing worse than reading a blog and the newest post is from November 2008.


----------



## pashphotography (Jan 27, 2012)

NickA said:


> You can achieve the same results now with HTML 5 and Javascript (and some JQuery, which is Javascript).  There are ready made templates out there you can start with if you don't want to design your site from scratch.  The nice thing about HTML 5 is it's favorable to mobile devices as well.  So the page will render nicely on a 3.7" screen on a phone to you 9.7" iPad or one of the many sizes of Android tablets.


 The one template I am considering is an HTML 5 ~ I've heard that the SEO for these isn't as great as for a straight HTML like a wordpress site for example.. however.. i need the ease of a template site - that I don't have to do the legwork myself on.  I'm busy.. very busy (3 kids busy....lol) so I need every moment to be optimized. 

Thanks for the techy advice - I appreciate it.  It's all good food for thought.


----------



## maaatter (Jan 27, 2012)

As a web developer myself, I would suggest to stay far away from flash. Some people even completely disable flash in their browsers due to multiple reasons. And with Adobe putting the axe in flash on mobile browsers last year, yeah, you should change it. Like NickA said, you can achieve the same with HTML 5 and it'll work very well. And I don't know if you have it now, but you can also code it specifically for mobile devices if it exceeds certain number and it'll be more mobile friendly.


----------



## pashphotography (Jan 27, 2012)

kamerageek said:


> I've never been a big fan of flash myself. The overhead can be a significant usability issue for people with slower connections and it's a non-starter for the iDevice set. If broader reach is your concern, then a plain HTML site is probably the right answer. HTML 5 support is pretty ubiquitous among the top browsers, but the level of support is still questionable in some cases. Your mileage may vary.



It's funny you mention - I'm not a big fan of flash myself.. ha ha.  It's just that the price was right with the right amount of ease for design so I went with it.. and have been looking forward to a change for a while now.  I'm finally at a place where I can have a moment to do that so i'm considering my options.  You mentioned that HTML 5 support isn't great - what is the difference between html 5 and flash for example?  (is it a viable option?)


----------



## NickA (Jan 27, 2012)

HTML 5 is just plain old HTML, with some new tags (called elements) added.  Not all browsers support HTML 5 yet (the new tags) so keep that in mind if you are going to use any of the new tags.

Check out this site: Premium WordPress Themes, Web Templates, Mobile Themes | ThemeForest.  They have really good templates for a decent price.  You can get WordPress templates from there too.  The nice thing is that they give you all the files, even the .psd files.  So if you want to do some customization, you can.  Although they are good right out of the box.


----------



## NickA (Jan 27, 2012)

maaatter said:


> Some people even completely disable flash in their browsers due to multiple reasons.



I do on my phones and Android tablets.  Just slows everything down.  And the Flash plugin crashes in Chrome about once or twice a week.


----------



## maaatter (Jan 27, 2012)

NickA said:


> maaatter said:
> 
> 
> > Some people even completely disable flash in their browsers due to multiple reasons.
> ...



Simply put - flash is a POS. And there's plenty of other ways out there to get the same end result, people just need to adapt to them more.


----------



## Rephargotohp (Jan 27, 2012)

maaatter said:


> As a web developer myself, I would suggest to stay far away from flash. Some people even completely disable flash in their browsers due to multiple reasons. And with Adobe putting the axe in flash on mobile browsers last year, yeah, you should change it. Like NickA said, you can achieve the same with HTML 5 and it'll work very well. And I don't know if you have it now, but you can also code it specifically for mobile devices if it exceeds certain number and it'll be more mobile friendly.



As a web developer maybe you can answer a question I have about Flash, Why do large companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi, McDonalds, Chrysler etc all have flash elements in their websites and all of the Native You Tube Videos(native non mobile) are all flash. All porn videos, the largest watched thing on the internet ( so I have heard, I wouldn't know) are flash. They have huge budgets so why would they use something that dosen't work?

Just curious


----------



## maaatter (Jan 27, 2012)

Rephargotohp said:


> maaatter said:
> 
> 
> > As a web developer myself, I would suggest to stay far away from flash. Some people even completely disable flash in their browsers due to multiple reasons. And with Adobe putting the axe in flash on mobile browsers last year, yeah, you should change it. Like NickA said, you can achieve the same with HTML 5 and it'll work very well. And I don't know if you have it now, but you can also code it specifically for mobile devices if it exceeds certain number and it'll be more mobile friendly.
> ...



I didn't say it doesn't work, it does, but it's not the bees knees. Flash is more widely supported than something like HTML5 which is technically not even official yet. It's set to be released in 2014-2015. Some companies will jump on the bandwagon when it's more widely supported, but until then, no multi billon dollar company will do that. They'll be risking too much. But in the end, they can both do exactly the same thing (Flash - Flash Particles by Seb Lee-Delisle HTML5 - HTML Particles by Seb Lee-Delisle).


----------



## pashphotography (Jan 27, 2012)

NickA said:


> Just some more of my .02...  Please don't have music playing when I hit your site.  And if you do, give me a way to quickly turn it off.  And please no bright white text on a black background.  And if you are going to have a blog, try and keep it updated.  Nothing worse than reading a blog and the newest post is from November 2008.


 ha ha ha.. guilty on almost all fronts  ... It's so funny - it's stuff that annoys the S*&t out of me too, but I'm guilty of it - if the option is there I tend to go with it (i.e. - music).  I'm going to be changing all that on the new site.  I had a great wordpress blog that I hosted myself going but the template I purchased allowed phishing sites to be added to it via holes in the coding - so I had to start back from scratch and my new blog is a little threadbare.

Thanks for all the input.. I am enjoying reading all the 'two bits' people have to put in on this topic.


----------



## pashphotography (Jan 27, 2012)

maaatter said:


> As a web developer myself, I would suggest to stay far away from flash. Some people even completely disable flash in their browsers due to multiple reasons. And with Adobe putting the axe in flash on mobile browsers last year, yeah, you should change it. Like NickA said, you can achieve the same with HTML 5 and it'll work very well. And I don't know if you have it now, but you can also code it specifically for mobile devices if it exceeds certain number and it'll be more mobile friendly.


  Thank you for this advice maaatter!  



Rephargotohp said:


> maaatter said:
> 
> 
> > As a web developer myself, I would suggest to stay far away from flash. Some people even completely disable flash in their browsers due to multiple reasons. And with Adobe putting the axe in flash on mobile browsers last year, yeah, you should change it. Like NickA said, you can achieve the same with HTML 5 and it'll work very well. And I don't know if you have it now, but you can also code it specifically for mobile devices if it exceeds certain number and it'll be more mobile friendly.
> ...


 Interesting question Rephargotohp!


----------



## eric-holmes (Jan 27, 2012)

I have a completely non-flash website that acts like flash. I think it works great.


----------



## pashphotography (Jan 27, 2012)

eric-holmes said:


> I have a completely non-flash website that acts like flash. I think it works great.



Nice site Eric... I like the flow of it.. well done.


----------



## kamerageek (Jan 27, 2012)

pashphotography said:


> kamerageek said:
> 
> 
> > I've never been a big fan of flash myself. The overhead can be a significant usability issue for people with slower connections and it's a non-starter for the iDevice set. If broader reach is your concern, then a plain HTML site is probably the right answer. HTML 5 support is pretty ubiquitous among the top browsers, but the level of support is still questionable in some cases. Your mileage may vary.
> ...



NickA did a nice job of answering your question. HTML 5 adds new tags that allow web developers to specify features that are implemented by the browser (video playback, for example). So I want to play a video I can instruct the browser via an HTML tag to treat a piece of content as a video and the browser will know what to do with it. Flash on the other hand, relies on little programs that are downloaded to your computer and hosted on an HTML page in your browser. You have to have an installed piece of software (called a runtime) on your computer in order to execute the instructions in the Flash site. The Flash program instructs the Flash runtime to play a video, show a slideshow, etc. 

Flash works relatively well and is well established on desktop computers. Apple iDevices do not have a Flash runtime, so there is nothing available to follow the instructions imbedded in your Flash site. Adobe is slowly walking away from Flash as they see the writing is on the wall for its end of life.


----------



## Elizabeth909 (Jan 29, 2012)

Hi there - thought I would add my two cents. Flash is fine if you are using a service that gives you a shadow site for the iPad and iPhone. One service that does it all is FolioLink.com. They just launched a highly customizable HTML5 design for photographers and they have been doing Flash for a long time that run shadow iPad, iPhone and search engine sites in HTML. I know you said you want to buy the template and handle the hosting on your own, so FolioLink is maybe not a match for you, but it is a great solution if you are looking for an all in one deal that you can customize and manage on your own. The site behaves like Flash, but is built with HTML5. Let me know what you think.

 Check:


----------



## lapequesalsera (Jan 31, 2012)

I just bought my emmet template the other day, bludomain hasbeen exceptional about their customer service, and no, I don't work for them lol, I red a lot about flash vs HTML websites and im glad that they (BD) got one HTML, like you said, being a moma and trying to take care of business does takes time and the last thing one wants is spend hours trying to figure out how to put an image on your website, BD is easy, inexpensive and I love their templates.


----------



## CCericola (Jan 31, 2012)

Can't you have both? an HTML and flash version?


----------



## NickA (Jan 31, 2012)

CCericola said:


> Can't you have both? an HTML and flash version?



You can have both if you design your site in such a way.  I lot of people just use Flash in certain places on their site, other have their whole site in Flash.  Ideally, if you want to go all Flash, you normally have some kind of watered down mobile version.  But Flash is slowing phasing out.  There are other alternatives now that don't have the overhead or learning curve of Flash (if you are into writing action script for Flash).


----------



## aohara2001 (Feb 2, 2012)

I have my site through portfoliositez.com -- you can have your flash site for computer users and an ipad/iphone mirror site for those on the go.  Works well for me.


----------



## Free1 (Feb 4, 2012)

I have some experience with both, flash and html. My vote would go to html. I was a big fan of flash but when i got my first mobile phone with windows mobile and the second one with android i started to see that html works fine and flash isn`t.


----------

