Posts Tagged ‘flash’

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

A simple website that does some of what Flash does best: animate

I shake my fist at Starbucks, but they definitely know how to use a brand image. This is an attractive website with smooth animations, great colors, subtle-but-pleasant sound (who knew writing in chalk could sound nice?), and chalk dust! Considering the high-quality of the artwork, the frame around the site is a little sloppy, but that’s forgivable. This site actually makes it a small pleasure to take their “survey” and find out what kind of coffee I should buy from them–even if I have no intention of buying their coffee.

Of course this solution won’t always work, but it’s a nice reminder that sometimes bells and whistles aren’t necessary. Keeping things simple while focusing on one solid concept and polishing it to a shiny finish can really go a long way, requiring little leg work to get the message around.

Check it out: http://www.starbuckscoffeeathome.com/


Posted by The Rooster

Tags: , , , ,

Leave a Comment

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

New SLS AMG site use context sensitive actions to immerse user

SLS AMG site

The new SLS AMG site by Jung von Matt/Alster brings a immersive full motion video flash experience that lets the user experience the new car hands on. Using context sensitive actions in a series of quck events, users are asked to press certain key commands to progress through the experience. For example, in one scenario the user is asked to press the down arrow to brake, and while still holding the key is asked to press the space bar to accelerate. The user is then told to release the brake, which results in the car peeling and accelerating forward. In another scenario, the user must time the key presses in order to shift through the gears. Experiences like these are immersive and give the user an active role in the experience. The history of the medium can be traced back to the 1980s, when the first full motion video game was released on the laserdisc. It was called Dragon’s Lair. Its legacy lives on in the new SLS AMG site.

Posted by michael

Tags: ,

Leave a Comment

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

NPR and WJS building iPad only sites

Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio plan to release iPad optimized web sites once the device comes out next month. Both sites will automatically detect when web surfers arrive via iPad and display the optimized content. The difference? No flash content. NPR plans to replace the current flash audio players with HTML 5 based players instead. Unlike NPR, WSJ will only serve up a flash free front page. If the user digs deeper into the site, they will encounter the soon to be infamous “blue box”, the lego symbol that displays when flash content isn’t supported. HTML 5 was developed to reduce the use of proprietary plug-ins like Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX. Although the technology is still nascent and not yet widely supported, sites like Chrome Experiments have been showcasing some incredible creative experiments that can be achieved with the new technology. Whether this is the start of a new trend is still to be determined, but devices like the iPad could accelerate the adoption rate for HTML 5. (nytimes)

Posted by michael

Tags: ,

Comment (1)