How Things Changed!

This old article made me smile. How much have changed in technology and how much did broadband contribute to these changes. Heck, when I wrote this back in 2001, I was still sitting behind a 56K modem building my web sites.

All this said, I still think that the article is right on in its general approach: if you are not an artsy site for a rock band, if you are an online store or provider of information to public, do not stand between your customers and what they want to get from your site!

Here is the old text:

There are a lot of new technology buzz words that a person in charge of the company’s web site should know. Not because a small business web site must use those technologies, but because you might end up paying more for development of features that are at best, unnecessary.

Here are some of those Plug-Ins and Features you should know about:

• Macromedia Flash is the worst offender because some developers can get totally carried away, creating long intro animations. Can you imagine a Costco requiring customers to watch a 5-minute animation before they enter the store? Flash also requires a proprietary player which might not be available on your visitor’s computer.
  
• Creating dynamic transitions between pages, just like they do in TV news reports, is probably the tackiest thing you can do to a low-budget web site. Such artsy features require elaborately designed web sites with other video enhancements as well.
  
• Music is not a buzz word, but there are sites that try to play music when a page is loaded. There are two arguments against music: not all computers can play compressed sound files and uncompressed files are too large for modem users. Computer music, known as MIDI, will differ greatly based on the sound capabilities of a visitor’s computer. What sounds good on yours, might sound horrible elsewhere.
  
• Streaming video requires lots of bandwidth and server resources. Use it only if it will improve sales and customer satisfaction.
  
• All proprietary plug-ins should be avoided until they become mainstream. Even then, don’t rush in.

Bottom line: try to stay away from multimedia and fancy artsy features that you might like, but would stand between the customer and his desires.