HarvardScience
So it was a year in the making, but the HarvardScience site has been dragged - kicking and screaming - to the finish-line. Here's a few of my many lessons learned.
Choosing a CMS
During the six months before I began building the HarvardScience site, the Harvard News Office had been working with designer Claudio luís Vera of Studio Module. The result was 28 beautiful templates, which had been chiseled, filed, and polished to the client's adoration. Unfortunately, during this time the News Office had still not made up its mind about what CMS to use. In fact there was still some muttering about how a custom CMS was the way to go.
So approximately six months ago, I built the first draft of HarvardScience using Drupal over the course of a weekend. The result was exactly what I had hoped for - the news office was so excited by the speed at which the site could be built they decided to go with Drupal. The rapid development of a prototype or draft site can be built using Drupal made the CMS issue a fait accompli strategy.
The sIFR Drama
My first draft of the site did not use any of the mark-up, styles, or sIFR that the designer had provided. I instead created my own custom theme, relying heavily on blocks and views. I had assumed that if the site looked very close to the original design and that the CMS was in place, everyone would be happy. This was a huge error on my part. The designer had been working with the client for nearly six months at this point, and everyone had become wed to the "Whitney" font used heavily throughout the site. So despite a devious experiment on my part proving that the client couldn't tell which page used sIFR and which did not, I was asked to go back and add Whitney into the site.
Thus began draft number two. I installed the sIFR module Jeff Robbins and began to add in the style I had originally left out. The module itself is super easy to use. Sadly I didn't find sIFR2 so lovely. Regardless how much I fiddled with font-size, letter-spaceing, padding, margins, height, and width, I could not get consistently sized sIFR text replacement. I was informed by the designer that if I moved to sIFR3, which was still in beta at the time, all my problems would go away. In short, at the end of this draft, everyone was pretty frustrated - most of all me.
Thus began draft number three. This time I did what I should have done to begin with. (What is that saying about hindsight?) First I threw out the theme I had built. Next I grabbed the directory the designer had used to store all his stylesheets, flash, javascript, and images to run his 28 templates, and stuck it at the root of my drupal install.
Next I copied the mark-up from one of designer's templates, and named it page.tpl.php. Then piece by piece, I replaced the static content with nodes, views, and blocks - themeing as I went - ensuring that Drupal spit out the exact same mark-up as the original template. So after a very long journey through the land of sIFR, the site emerged as the designer originally intended.
Warning: Curating 2000 Nodes Can Take a While
The original "Research Matters" site, which was replaced by HarvardScience, was powered by a custom CMS and contained related stories, people, and programs. During the script-powered migration to Drupal these relationships were preserved and entered as related node CCK fields. However, the HarvardScience Editors wanted to create a new topic based classification system for the 2000 nodes. This resulted in a huge amount of work for the news office team, and might have been avoided if they had chosen to use the keywords used in the original Research Matters site. But even if they had been spared this curation, there were still many images to crop (yes, we could have used the imagecache module, but the editors wanted complete control over the crops) and there were many new researchers and programs to add, edit, and remove.
My First Foray into the World of Flash
I've never worked with flash, and to honest, have eschewed it for some time now. So this was the first time that I had ever created page.tpl.php files to generate the xml to be passed to the flash. In the end, it turned out to be quite straight forward. So if there are any other flash cowards out there, I hope my positive experience gives you strength.
Cool site! I'll be adding it
Cool site! I'll be adding it as a source to a science news aggregation website I'll be launching soon (soon). Any word on custom modules, contrib modules you use or wanted to use but were not up to the standards you were expecting? Any discoveries? The site looks and reads great, congrats!
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Biology Articles
flash :/
oh my. so many tiny "block" tabs ]:)
IMHO using so much flash is a bit overkill, i understand that the flash-thirsty client wanted it, but it is not even displaying normaly on my linux box with firefox 2.0.0.6.. i took a screenshot of the dreadful scene. i guess i was not the targeted audience.
your screenshot shows that
your screenshot shows that you got more than i did. guess my resolution was also off and the drop down menus showed up under the flash for me.
nice try tho and omigod ..what patience adn perseverance!
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http://namima.in-egypt.net اجدد اخبار ممثلين
Arabic/Hebrew with font-style:italic is not working in FF...
@marafa: I'm interested in Arabic sites, while i've build many RTL themes. I found
font-style: italicis not working with Firefox... now a known bug, but you can only see rectangles in Firefox. You could fix this with .site-slogan { font-style:normal; }.Just putting in my words on
Just putting in my words on the flash - doesn't render for me either on Firefox 2.0.0.7 / Ubuntu Linux.
The DHTML menus appear under the flash animation and there are some other minor issues as well, similar to that screenshot posted below.
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Brian Vuyk
Web Design, SEO and Applications Development
53 Nellida Cresc.,
Hamilton, ON, Canada, L9C 7P9
Phone: 905-318-5147
brian@brianvuyk.com | http://www.brianvuyk.com
flash :/
It is a known issue with flash in linux and gecko browsers. http://www.adobe.com shows the same issue. Mozilla has fixed their side of the issue for Firefox 3 (unreleased at the time of this comment). However Adobe has yet to release a flash plugin that takes advantage of this fix.
sIFR & Linux Problems
What I can see of the site looks really good. But, I can't see everything. There are white blocks on the left side, and the drop-down menus are hidden behind the sIFR text and the Flash block. I tried both FireFox & Opera on Ubuntu 7.10.
sIFR has always been
sIFR has always been problematic in Linux when using wmode: 'transparent'. I don't advise using sIFR for links as it is more trouble than it is worth. The site looks great in FF and IE on Windows. Well done.
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Alex Cochrane
Spoon Media
DHTML over Flash
Hi maureen,
congrats for the site, looking very nice! I like the main menu you used, but how did you managed to make the submenu items appear ABOVE the flash content? Could you pls share some tips with us?
Looks sharp!
I'm on Firefox+Linux as well though, so the site is unusable for me. I'm also allergic to flash for anything other than animations.
Asides from that, the site doesn't look like Drupal at first glance. My only suggestion would be to use pathauto to generate more descriptive URLs, like 'progress/obesity_gene' instead of 'node/4241'.
Great job!
s.
nice site
Nice site and thanks for the story (I had similar experiences with some designers)
The inline stylesheets can be improved though! And please delete *.txt files (like http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/CHANGELOG.txt) from prying eyes. I have a FR somewhere that these should be deleted or renamed to filename.txt.php or os somewhere to avoid Drupal fingerprinting but most people didnt think it was a good FR.
--
groets
bert boerland
...
It's the old Security through obscurity debate.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
a bit true
dozens of way to fingerprint. however within one branch (5.x) not that easy other then trying to misuse a service. my personal opinion, dont give more information then needed and put it in the docs or the installer that it is best practice to delete those files.
why do we alter the apache version in our d.o? is that obscurity? no it is, "we dont tell more then you need to know" and is good security practice.
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groets
bert boerland
Linux and Opera
There are big problems with this site, Linux and Opera. The headings take an age to load, whilst the drop-down menus disappear beneath that massive slab of Flash and transparent Flash backgrounds appear opaque.
Not good. You probably would have been better off using just image replacement (with png's for alpha-transparency):
#header_example {background: transparent url('header.png') no-repeat left top;
width: 200px;
height: 200px;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
text-indent: -5000px;
}
Personally I find being able to view the menus more important than that Flash presentation! It's a nice design though and a reasonable implementation, just some accessibility problems.
sifr plus Linux equals a big old mess
Thanks so much for your insights, suggestions, and kind words. You are all completely write about Linux and sifr being oil and water. If I had had my way, the site would use none at all. But it was the client's call. In case it was confusing, my positive flash experience came only from the the home page movie.
It's a shame that the
It's a shame that the Harvard college of Science and Engineering aren't more Linux-conscious so that it would matter to them that their website isn't usable to someone using Linux. Anyone test this on Mac OS X?
Not the School of Applied Science and Engineering
Hi KipBond: Just so you know, this site belongs to the Harvard News Office, not the School of Applied Science and Engineering. The School of Applied Science and Engineering had many Linux users.
I see...
That makes a lot more sense now. "News people" are more interested in fancy fonts & flashy headlines than whether or not a small geeky group of people can access the information on the site. :) Anyway, now that I see it on a Windows PC, I really like how it looks. I'm sure I'd prefer your image-based version 1 better... but this is good. Kudos.
If I had had my way, the
Well you didn't have to use that method, what about just good old image replacement (see my post above)? And sIFR can work well on Linux, if used in moderation. :)
This is not wholly the client's fault as there are other ways of solving the problem. There are plenty of sites out there with nice headings/menus that don't require Flash at all.
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
I couldn't agree more.
Liam: I couldn't agree more. I had hoped to convey the complexity of working on a long project with many stakeholders who have differing opinions, interests, and agendas. If my original draft of the site (which did include image replacement) had been accepted, the site would not have needed to be re-built two more times and would not have offensive compatibility issues. I'm not interested in "faulting" anyone. I just wanted to make other folks, who may be faced with similar decisions, aware of the trade-offs. Thank you again for your thoughts and input.
Cheers,
Maureen
...
It's an excellent article and you did well. Don't worry, the Linux only crowd almost always posts on things like this.
One of the things people either forget or don't necessarily have access to is the existing site's traffic pattern. On my own site, Linux OS seems to make up almost 7% of my sites traffic. On another, it's 0%. My site is technical, the other is not. Having this data can help in your design decisions and also in supporting a design decision.
One example, years ago, a service site I know of was designed only for IE5 (years ago) because the staff determined that 'less then 4% of the market used something else'. Later when this multi-year project was implemented, it was found that 10% of the customer base for that company used Mac's. So an 'acceptable' generic loss of less then 4% suddenly became at least 10% of their existing customers that were paying them money. Let's just say the project was reverted and started over.
This approach may help you in the future. Management and decision makers can often only be influenced from a given path with this type of actual data. And sometimes the data shows it doesn't matter.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
Don't worry, the Linux only
Says the man from the comfort of his Windows installation. ;)
Maureen, it's a great article and really good looking site. But for GNU/Linux users the experience has some rather rough edges, so we're going to notice it and mention the problem. Some people really do use GNU/Linux on the desktop, and we'd like that number to increase. We're quite vocal about anything that doesn't work as it's a potential hindrance to the increase of our usage share. :D
Anyway, just wanted to point out that there are viable alternatives to sIFR that won't break on GNU/Linux. Thanks for showing us the site and have fun maintaining it. My wife works for a large university, and I've worked for committees too, so have some idea of the fun to be had when committees are involved. The final product is good, particularly considering you were working with multiple stakeholders.
All I'm saying is: think of the Linux users; won't somebody think of the Linux users?! :)
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
...
Of course, I don't surf the web from servers. That would be silly. But seriously, if you are going to be a die hard edge case, then it doesn't help your cause for people to rip on someone, instead they need to offer alternative implementations considering the design/project constraints. All the ripping does is alienate potential allies.
In this article, what I found interesting was the entire project experience. The why Drupal was chosen, the attempts to 'do it right' and project constraints that the implementor ran into with the design team and the management team. Larger complex websites are not just one person, but are teams of people with trade offs and balances. Ultimately management is responsible for these decisions.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
But seriously, if you are
I wasn't trying to rip, that's why I posted some CSS above for an alternative implementation. Maureen said the stakeholders wanted more than that which is fair enough (although I don't really understand it, but then I wasn't there). Don't think anyone in this thread is really trying to rip, they're just pointing out problems as they see them.
The article is an interesting read, am really glad that Maureen took the effort to post the story. It's good to see an example of a project that hit a few rocky patches but came through in the end. :)
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
Flash
"It's an excellent article and you did well. Don't worry, the Linux only crowd almost always posts on things like this."
In the course of my workday I am fortunate enough (ugh!) to work in Windows, OS X and Linux desktop environs.
Your reference to the "Linux-only crowd" doesn't cut it. When I visit that page I see about 1/3 of the information real estate pretty much wasted. I grudgingly keep Flash plug-ins installed because there are an increasing number of vendor sites that expect it to do even basic things like menuing. But do I consider this a good thing? Hardly. Whether working in Windows, OS X, or Linux I would be 300 percent happier if there were 90 percent less Flash kicking about. It has its place, but I consider the slow, kudzu-like expansion of Flash to be a disease.
I have had support staff from completely unusable Flash sites say "but our customers expect it!" I, in turn, continually wonder who those customers are. I mean, as a customer, *I* didn't ask them to pile on a bunch of Flash. At least Maureen can say who those customers are and is aware of the issues. In a lot of cases, though, I think the Flash disease is driven by usability-unaware, sizzle-oriented, glitz-infatuated -- dare I say adolescent? -- developers who boast about their "award-winning Web sites" (awards from their mutual self-congratulation society du jour) and who have swayed their unsophisticated customers on an eye-candy basis
I am employed at a large university in the Pacific Northwest where much of the university's home page, including menus, was recently reimplemented in Flash. That decision wasn't made by any technically sophisticated, accessibility-aware, artful Web folks but rather by some PR people. I consider it an embarrassment. But perhaps we have our eye on building the Adobe Pavillion some day. What does everybody else get?
Flash and Oracle
Why Flash instead of a Web page or Oracle instead of PostgreSQL? More than half of the implementations are to place Flash or Oracle on a resume.
Consider the situation where a PostgreSQL expert gets $300 per day and an Oracle administrator with the same number of years experience gets $1000 per day. Likewise a skilled Web page creator with several years experience earning $35 per hour and working along side a Flash kid earning $90 per hour. What would you want on your resume?
I know cases where a Flash kid implements a site, collects a bonus, then moves on before customers can register their complaints about the site.
The best approach is to point out a theme that provides the same effect using Javascript and gracefully degrades to HTML for non Javascript browsing. I know some of the Drupal themes provide a similar effect but have not tested them with Javascript off or with browsers using older CSS. Does any know of, or is working on a great dynamic menu built on Jquery, that works with older CSS, and provides a usable alternative without Javascript.
petermoulding.com/web_architect
Flashy resume
"Why Flash instead of a Web page or Oracle instead of PostgreSQL? More than half of the implementations are to place Flash or Oracle on a resume."
Peter, thanks for your reply. It helps me feel slightly less jaded. Maybe more cynical but definitely less jaded! :)
Oh come on, this is 2007
Flash has come a long way since 2000, and this is hardly a glitz-infatuated, adolescent use case for the platform. Our decision to use Flash was based on the delivery of video, slide shows and other rich media content for older non-tech savvy users that don't like managing plug-ins. Sadly, that content is not live on the HarvardScience site yet.
Ironically, it's the Linux Flash Player (not Flash itself) that's created the white boxes that some users see. It seems to be primarily clustered around Firefox users and Ubuntu, and the player's lack of support for the wmode parameter that's commonly used in the Windows and Mac OS's. To us it's as limiting as IE6's con-compliance with alpha PNG standards.
And yes, we're working on a fix to that issue.
Oh, come on.
Oh, come on, this is 2007.
Portable MP3 players have come a long way since 2000 as have earbuds, so why should you have a problem if I sit in the front pew at your wedding and listen to my iPod during the ceremony?
This hypothetical question is simply meant to invoke the old saw/saying/cliche "a place for everything and everything in its place".
You say "this is hardly a glitz-infatuated, adolescent use case for the platform..... Our decision to use Flash was based on the delivery of video, slide shows and other rich media content...
but then you say "Sadly, that content is not live on the HarvardScience site yet."
I am confused. Riddle me this: If the rationale for Flash use is not on the site yet, then why is Flash on the site now?
In Firefox, I use an extension called Flashblock that will display Flash as a blank area with a simple "play" button. This simply lets me choose whether I am curious enough about Flash content to bother to hit that "Play" button. I use it as an experimental device to answer the question: "Unless this play button leads me to some sort of obviously meaningful video, slide show or other animation in which I have, should I say a priori interest, in what percent of cases where I click on the play button is my experience enhanced?" I have to say that the answer to that question is pretty much zero. Clicking on that Harvard Science main page Flash last night simply added to that grim statistic and narrowed the predictive confidence interval.
While the folks who decided that consuming a third of the main Harvard Science page with clever Flash undoubtably thought that was, well clever, I can conclusively report one person's opinion that it did *nothing* -- nada, zero, zilch -- to add to that person's experience as a visitor. Much like the little "caterpillars" that consume an increasing amount of real estate on overzealous cable news screens, I found it frankly distracting and annoying.
So you might guess that I am not yet swayed by your protests against the "adolescent use case" indictment.
Of course, in the year 2000, when Flash wasn't quite so awesome and or wicked pissah! as it is now, I was 48 years old, so perhaps now, years later, I am one of the "older non-tech savvy users that don't like managing plug-ins". Hmmm, could you let Adobe know that (even though Flash should be used only when it adds something), I would be *pleased* to manage a Flash plug-in for my x86_64 Linux box at work? But mostly ... I like Web sites.
Can you tell us more about how you do the Flash banner
if you can spare a moment. Developed from scratched? Off the shelf flash component?
Very nice work - great job
they built it in flash, from scratch
it's a big frame-based animation with multiple masks and blur/alpha tweening on several of the objects. not a bad filesize either considering the amount of objects / images in it, though all the blur / alpha stuff does make it perform a bit sluggishly... can't be helped with those effects though.
very good, I'm interested how to add drop down menu
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Want see a sick site? www.netregist.com
sIFR rendering incorrectly on PC / Firefox
just so you know, all the sIFR text is reading "Rendered with sIFR 3" instead of the correct headlines in PC / Firefox 2.0.0.8. Reads correctly in PC / IE though.
one other question on this, how come the static links in the left sidebar are sIFR instead of just images? I would think for that type of nav item a straight css image rollover would be easier and reduce page rendering times (as you would have several less sIFR objects on the page)
Yeah it looks terrible on my
Yeah it looks terrible on my Firefox, even though I can tell the site is very nice, it says "Rendered with sIFR3" EVERYWHERE.
I really liked your story! I passed it to my friend who is having the same problem with people wanting to use a custom CMS and I'm really hoping they go with Drupal.
Really nice article, and
Really nice article, and interesting site (as it's expected from such site), but ...
As it is said in some comments here, too many flash.
Navigation done in flash, it's overkill :-(
And it can made site useless for sume users (linux).
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Drupal Theme Garden
Standards
I like reading about the decision making behind a site.
I looked on a project where the demo was on a Mac even though all the target customers use Windows and the Mac was attached locally to the server despite the majority of customers dialing up from remote country areas. With the very latest Mac, masses of memory, and gigabit network, the demonstrator still clicked through all the screens just before the demo so that every file and image was cached in the browser. The target browser for the customer's desktop was Windows IE 5 which at that time was totally incompatible with Mac IE 5, was in fact a completely different code base. The demo was on the Mac version and never tested on the Windows version.
Standards help. The element could use a lang attribute or an xml:lang attribute. Do you validated your site or pages?
petermoulding.com/web_architect
Our approach was *extremely* standards-driven
The original templates validated perfectly in XHTML/strict before Drupal was chosen as the CMS. HarvardScience was the site that broke the studio in to Drupal, and broke Maureen (the Drupaller) into a design-driven process.
The site was not designed specifically for Drupal, and there are many decisions that would have been made different had it been the case. However, we used a design-driven approach -- which is 180° opposite from the Drupal-driven approach that the more vocal Linux-centric members of the community favor.
Had we designed for Drupal, the workflow would have been dramatically different, as our templates would have followed Drupal's quirky page structure. Instead, we created a DOM and a document structure in a vacuum and the developer tried (heroically) to match it in Drupal. There are a lot of lessons to be learned by all from the development process on HarvardScience, and these seem to be overlooked in the sIFR/Flash flamefest that this page has become.
Our approach was *extremely* standards-driven, but not built around Drupal. To get perfect strict validation, you'll need to know theming like a Ninja first, then build your themes to match.
Thanks for pointing out the header issues -- they're entirely fixable. In hindsight, it would have been great to channel the Drupal community's zeal for pointing out flaws before launch, but sadly that wasn't an option at the time.
Drupal's quirky page
I am not sure what you mean with this comment. Drupal's page structure can be modified easily to suit any design.
I have read all the posts (and made one) and every single one of them directed at maureen has been constructive and in no way inflammatory. I think you are taking this too personally.
Most designers (like yourself) will do their job before they ever see a finished bare bones site. Most designers I have come across (and note I am not talking about you as I don't know you) do not understand how sites are themed and do not consider the process in their work. The great thing about Drupal is this doesn't matter as it can be easily shaped to fit *any* design.
Maureen has done a great job of themeing your great designs. I think everyone agrees. Some people were simply pointing out the problems with sIFR and Flash on certain platforms. This is not a small linux minority speaking here. I am sure most people swap between all the major platforms throughout the day (I know I do).
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Alex Cochrane
Spoon Media
The site was not designed
I don't understand. How is Flash not working properly under GNU/Linux a: 'Drupal-driven approach?' GNU/Linux users are used to things working when they visit a Web site, it stands out boldly when we can't see menus and there are slow-loading grey boxes everywhere. We're going to mention it, if Windows users had this problem you'd see the same comments from them.
Honestly we're not trying to be rude, but for a GNU/Linux user the site is unusable, it's that bad! I wish Adobe would fix Flash, but they haven't, there are other options for image replacement, which you couldn't use for one reason or another. Fair enough, but please don't get angry with us for pointing out that we're having problems viewing the site.
This comment reads like a thinly-veiled insult.
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
That's not how I read it
That's not how I read it. I took it as a compliment to the Drupal community for its ability to point out flaws.
Quirky Page Structure
Interesting - the only thing I can think of to fit this to my knowledge of Drupal is template regions. But those can be defined in the standards-compliant template, and the number you can have is unlimited.
The term "design-driven" sounds a bit odd... I'd argue that all design is design-driven! It should also be user-driven; it should never be "CMS-driven," and if it has to be, then there's something wrong with the CMS. The entire goal of Drupal - and it has been incredibly successful in this - is to be a "design-driven" CMS.
I agree that you have to know themeing well to ... theme... a site properly in Drupal. And there is, occasionally, module-specific junk that is more difficult to modify. But I think on the whole that "workflow" is simply a matter of proper initial configuration. Call me a recent convert... :)
It's a lovely site. It's wonderful to see Drupal being used for big-name sites (if Epic Records can become a completely Drupal shop, anybody can!). And despite being reflexive anti-Flash, I agree that sIFR is a good way to go if you absolutely must have different fonts.
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Integrated Learning Centre, Queen's University
Drop dead gorgeous!
Such very fine work; thanks for sharing this! gorgeous!
AmyStephen@gmail.com
http://OpenSourceCommunity.org
nice site ....
nice site ....
Impressive
In the real world you build the site the client wants, not the site that you would have wanted.
Sometimes the client needs to be educated. Often the client simply wants something different that you would want. In which case you BUILD THE SITE THE CLIENT WANTS.
The client wanted sIFR. You explained the consequences of using sIFR, you showed them how the site would look without sIFR. The client still wanted sIFR.
In this case the client valued preserving the integrity of the design over all other concerns.
Its was their right to make such decisions, and its was your job to make those decisions work.
You were given difficult constraints and produced wonderful results!
Make demos real
There are times when you have to make the demonstrations real so your customer can see how their customers react.
Speed is an issue. I use a browser that works perfectly with Flash. My Internet connection lets me download a 4.6 gigabyte DVD image in a few minutes so the average Flash file will download within my lifetime. I do not use that fast connection to demonstrate how a site will look to the public.
If I download the same DVD image file through a regular ISDN connection, the download can take 2 hours. A server in Western Europe might take 18 hours to deliver the same file because some country level connections are comparatively slow and overloaded. I use the speed comparison to highlight the need to look at a site from the visitor's viewpoint. Are your customers local, in the country, or overseas?
I tried to find a nice new car online a few months ago. The Bentley, Bugatti, and Pagani sites were way too slow due to Flash. You could not see anything until everything loaded. I moved on to Daewoo. :-)
Today the Bentley site works. Bentley dumped Flash for regular images and a little Javascript. I discovered they have a convertible version of the Continental GT, which is handy when you are out shopping on a nice day.
You have to make the sites work for the intended audience and demonstrate the site the way the audience see it. When the big brass see how bad their site is outside of the development environment, they are quick to dump the new Flash design and go back to Frontpage. :-)))
petermoulding.com/web_architect
Just Gorgeous!
Wow! It's amazing what can happen when you have a top notch designer working with a skilled Drupaller. A site like this is really going to help the community by showcasing Drupal's flexibility and ability to not look like a stock 'Drupal' site. Anything we can do to foster collaboration between truly fantastic designers and Drupal will be worthwhile. I'd be interested in hearing from the designer about his/her experience and learning curve while encountering Drupal for the first time. I'm looking forward to D6 and a more designer-friendly Drupal. I'd also want to encourage great designers like the Modulist to continue the dialogue and improvements.
Has anyone who has posted in this thread actually complained to Adobe about their crappy implementation of the Flash player for Linux? They really need to be called on this. (Yes, I understand that you're pointing out your experience on this one site to the site developers and that has value for them, but unless Linux people make noise at Adobe, they'll have no incentive to improve their Linux implementation.)
Has anyone who has posted in
Oh yes, frequently and at length (of course). See the Adobe Linux blog: http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/ They're making progress in general though, getting there. :)
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
unless Linux people make
I think an added incentive for them to improve the Linux implementation would be for developers to not use their product(s) since it's not cross-platform accessible (or only use the parts that are).
On perception
A few points on perception. First, because good designers need to engage so much empathy when they're designing, it's easy to make them defensive when you're giving what feels to you to be constructive criticism. When someone's defensive, you simply cannot have a clear dialogue with them. What feels normal to you and me might wilt them. It doesn't mean you can't get your point across, it just means that you need to think about how you say it. What's normal dialogue just seems to be skewed in opposite directions in these two groups. I've worked in both design and coding houses and they just seem to be at either extremes of the harsh scale.
I've found that if I want to communicate to designers and also be heard, I need to be more careful how I word things. I'm mentioning this because I think this thread is being interpreted very differently by coders and designers, like a Rorschach.
Meanwhile...
The reason that Adobe doesn't cater to Linux users is because they're not a big enough marketshare right now for them to invest in. Asking designers to cripple themselves economically in solidarity with the Linux cause is just not productive. Most Linux users choose to work with Linux for many good reasons, but it's a choice. Hearing the righteousness of the self-marginalized carries the same strident vibe as hearing a vegan complaining that there's meat at the Thanksgiving dinner you've just spent a week preparing.
It's perfectly legit to be frustrated by the lack of Linux support, but don't expect gain converts by expressing the frustration. It tends to blend in with noise. Linux needs to gain marketshare, and its proponents are going up against the well-paid marketing departments and strategists of the other operating systems. The difficulties are compounded by Linux not having a unified face - there are so many distros that each one could be considered an operating system from a marketing perspective. It's a fragmented product without a clear identity, which makes it a challenge to market in the traditional sense.
And yet, the fact is that there's so much about Linux that's so frackin' cool that despite all its challenges and all of the efforts of the other operating systems' marketing warriors, they've failed to stamp it out and it's usage is growing just fine.
It would be interesting to find out from the business people at Adobe just how much marketshare Linux would need before they invested in decent Flash implementation and compare it with the growth curve in Linux usage. If the cutoff point is too far away, then it might be less effort and stress for the Linux community to roll their own Flash Player over at SourceForge. (If there are open source Flash dev tools, why not open source players?) It would certainly help the spread of Linux.
If we want more widespread adoption of Drupal, we need to court designers and marketers. Currently Drupal doesn't present as welcoming an environment and community as, for example, Joomla, where every single time I've posted, I've been answered helpfully. Here, about half of my posts get answered. When I've asked for help at meetups I haven't gotten it. I recognize the efforts of many who are working to change this, but until the community changes, designers are going to go where they feel good, which is currently elsewhere. Designers like Modulist who are willing to be persistent enough to work with and learn Drupal are rare and should be applauded.
People are going to use the best tools available to them to achieve the best results they can for their clients, and they'll use tools that they're comfortable with. It's almost guaranteed that your criteria are going to be very different from their clients' criteria.
One Small Point
Gnash.
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Web Design, GNU/Linux and Drupal.
I'm not sure if that would be so easy to do...
Using the swf format reference information that Adobe publishes currently precludes use for creating alternate swf 'players'. That, coupled with the frequency of updates to the players, would make it difficult to maintain currency. There could also be licencing issues with some codecs included in the player etc but I am unfamiliar with that from a player perspective, so don't know if that's important or not.
But the latest update of the player from Adobe appears to have been a synchronized release across Win/Mac/Linux OS'es... which seems encouraging: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/
I think (given the above recent activity by Adobe) that the most successful strategy would be to continue to demand support for Linux (including feature parity/bug fixes etc). Adobe appear to have embraced open source activity (e.g. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/) , so perhaps they will be more receptive to maintaining flash player parity for Linux going forward.
Disclaimer - I'm a flash developer and use windows, not linux so the above comments are just my observations/speculation... nothing more. I don't have any current experience with linux (or mac OS), although I expect to set up a linux test environment at some point, because I am interested. One of the things I like about flash (at least conceptually) is the ability to code once for cross-platform/cross-browser use, so in theory I should not need to test specifically in a linux player... so I share the disappointment of the linux community if things don't work as they should.
Back on topic: Congrats on the site. I've recently started learning php/Drupal and integrating flash as I create my own site - and I'm intrigued by the possibilities, including graceful degradation to regular html content if flash capability is not available (or perhaps not preferred) by the user. For future projects you might want to also check out the services/amfphp module combination as an option for exchanging data with flash.
Great Write-up
Thanks, Maureen.
I've already quoted you in (yet another) warning to my co-workers about design dictating code, and the tortured consequences that can result. (Though I fully understand the limitations under which you were toiling - stepping in only after the creation of 26(!) comps). So, again, thanks for sharing.
p.s. -- I ended my rant with "When just a client and a designer get together, the third person in the room is often the devil." Too harsh?
Looks smart. I'm not
Looks smart. I'm not surprised it took 1 year though. :)
Marcel
Website Traffic Reseller
Blogger Wanted
Business 2 Business Classified
Windows, Firefox, no Flash - but a witty green banner
I've read the posts about the issues wit Linux Flash plugins, but I'm seeing something different here. Currently, I'm at my parents' machine. This Windows PC has a modem connection and, hence, no Flash installed as any useful Flash apps would load too slow (I've tested all three of them...) and it's a simple way to ban Flash ads or banners.
Now, on your site, this gives me a huge green banner through the middle of the start page with "This is where the accessable version of the media content would go." inside.
"where the content would go" -- if what, precisely,happened? ;-)
modules
Did you use any particular modules for site structure, or just taxonomy terms?
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Very nice Site
Thanks for sharing with the world the how to's
Ron Mahon
Alias "Link" at
http://The-Villages-Online.com