Re: [tlug] Opera on FreeBSD (was: Redhat)

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 10:06:38AM -0400, jmglov wrote:

>Quoth Tod McQuillin <devin@example.com>:

>> Also, you get the flash plugin working at the same time.

>And have you reported this bug?

Thank you :-)  Every time Konqueror gives me the little dialog
box about downloading Flash (which AFAIK is wishful thinking; 
AFAIK Adobe has no plans for a Konq Flash plugin, and once in a fit
of perversity I tried the Mozilla plugin and it failed miserably in
Konq, despite the fact that it can allegedly use them) I refrain from
checking the box that says "Do not show this again" just b/c I want
to know about it when I've dodged a Flash bullet.

Wanna see something gross?  There's an ISP whose entire web site is
totally non-functional w/out it:

http://www.k-online.com/

The only worse example of the overuse of Flash that I've seen is Nova
(the language school chain), whose web site is 100% Flash.  Yes, 100%.
Without Flash, you see nothing at all, just a blank screen.  The
entire site is one big Flash movie, broken up into a large number
of "Click for next" screens, pitching how great (they think) it is to
teach at Nova.  To make matters worse, each section is several hundred
Kbytes.  The site was obviously designed by people wth  high bandwidth
connections and without any grasp of the idea that many people do not
have those.  Their site works pretty well if you have Flash and a
broadband connection, but if you lack either of those, you're totally
excluded.

Besides its weight and the sheer wrongness and uselessness of Flash,
one of the things that really bugs me about Flash, especially the
over-use of it, is the extreme exclusiveness that it brings with it.
If you're blind and you come across a site that uses Flash and has no
non-Flash version (something which is becoming more and more common) you
miss some of it entirely.  If the site is totally dependent on Flash and
is non-functional without it, you're completely out.  You cannot use the
site at all.

The above-mentioned ISP could, I'm sure, be sued under the Americans
With Diabilities Act by any blind customer who was unable to use
their website.

And if Jose Colina of K-Online ever reads this, if you had hired me,
you wouldn't have had to advertise that sysadmin position three times
in the last two months and you would have a clued sysadmin to advise
you about problems like that (and who could also fix them), but I'm
off the market now.  Your loss is my new employer's gain :-)

>-Josh "Flash is the mind-killer..." Glover
>
>PS: ...Flash is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I feel the need to snarf these for my quotes file :-)

Jonathan
-- 
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys ACC46EF9

Attachment: pgp00042.pgp
Description: PGP signature