Stefson*dot*com

Welcome fellow bloggers and webmasters.
Here I am again with a review of a website in the usability test series.

This time we are going to take a closer look at www.z33.be.

This is the website of an artcenter in Hasselt, Limburg. It focusses on graphic art using different media like expositions, dance, theatre, …

First observations when we first view the site:

• Completely Flash based (auch)
• All the information is crammed into a a small canvas of 610h x 760w

The reason for a design based entirely on Flash can be explained because it has a very high art-factor. You can create really nice effects and a very artistic look using Flash, but the downside of this is you have to sacrifice a lot of important usability issues.
The small canvas is also because of the use of Flash. The bigger the canvas the more resources that have to be diverted to keeping everything at a bare minimum.

Further inspection of the website shows us:

• You broke the back button! That’s right! Never ever do that. Most people won’t even notive the difference between a Flash based or a regular HTML/CSS design. The back button is such a standard these days for users that breaking this function is a huge mistake.
• Impossible to select text. Okay, this is not a huge issue, but still. If you are creating an information website, then do not use Flash to display your content. Simple as that.
• When you navigate to another page, the website has to ‘load’ the new page. This is a typical Flash thing. The first 3 times you flip from page to page you have a “Whoa cool effect”. After that it get rather annoying. Again, that’s Flash.
• This is an important one. Displaying content with a Flash based design.
  As you can see, they provide a lot of information on their site. Now take a look on the main page at the bottom right block.
  
  A little bit of information is displayed about their mission, who they are, what they do etc. Because of the small canvas to work with (remember) this piece of content is jammed into a small content box with a scroller (a Flash scroller! The mouse scrollwheel doesn’t work so you are forced to use the tiny arrows or drag the bar). Truly a lousy way to display content.

Now because of the Flash design some things work different.
Take for instance this issue. I wanted to create a thumb of the website using Websnapr. This is what it sees.

Now this website has huge potential. It’s a dream come true for any designer. But for the love of everything that is holy, not Flash. Yes I admit, I’m not a big fan of Flash, and I would never use it myself. Yes you can do nice things with it and create awesome flashy bling-bling designs with it to impress clients.

I will ever go further. The site is well built, the navigation is in order, you have a searchfield that works, it has a built-in CMS. They even thought of a printpage function. It has a certain art-factor that creates a personality for Z33.
But here’s the bad news. All of this could have been achieved using simple HTML and CSS. And way better I might add.

So, in conclusion, we’ll remember:

• Never use Flash to create a content based website
• If you are planning on using Flash, keep it to a bare minimum
• Do not limit yourself to an exceptionally small canvas
• Do not break standard functions of the browser
• Remember Jakob Nielsens wise words: “About 99% of the time, the presence of Flash on a website constitutes a usability disease”.

Thanks for reading.
If you liked this article, you might want to take a look at the rest of the usability test series.
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