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Flash Animated Action courtesy of Yahoo, Inc.
If there is one thing that I really don't want to acknowledge, it is the inevitability of change. I like to get used to things, break them in, wear them out, and then get myself another similar such thing without having to learn how to use it all over again. It's just reassuring. But in the world of Information Technology, and especially the Internet, predictability is the enemy of progress. There is no safety zone for people like me. We have to keep up with the Joneses or be laughed out of our jobs. So it is with a sigh of glum resignation that I read this article in Technology Review. No, the general populace is not satisfied with having all the available knowledge of the modernized world a few microseconds away. They want it to look pretty, too. So pretty, in fact, that the Information Age seems to be fading quickly into the Dawn of the Quasi-Dimensional Interface. (I know it's hokey, but I'm still impressed with The New York Times Archives).
The article "Help Me Redesign the Web," by Roger Black, is written as a chronological summary of the progress of web page design, from the humble beginnings of the Internet as a research project to its modern-day role as a vehicle of expression for anyone with access to a web browser and a creative urge. The author reasons that those generations that have grown up with Internet access can only logically be expected to adapt it to their culture and their needs. And this, he says, is exactly what is happening today. It is not that the page-by-page structure of the World Wide Web is insufficient for its intended purpose, or lacking in anything. It is simply, at this point, too old-fashioned to excite the younger masses who are destined to control it. They want the appeal of innovation. They want a newer, improved World Wide Web with invisible transitions and effortless adaptability. He states that "...for all its powers, the browser is trapped in a world of pull-down menus and dialogue boxes" (Black 2). The menus and boxes were acceptable to past generations, but today's web designers and graphic artists have something else up their sleeves, apparently.
I checked out a preview of The New York Times Reader, which was mentioned in the article as being a cutting-edge site designed entirely with Flash animation. It does have its advantages, and used in this context, I can see nothing but an improvement over the standardized format of a web page. It can get very tedious when one needs to use a scroll bar to read each line of text individually, back and forth across a page as well as up and down. The design of the NY Times Reader eliminates this problem entirely, by allowing the user to fit the screen to their monitor. This sort of thing will certainly be beneficial to the exploding mobile device market. On the other hand, I have encountered many sites where the flash animation is so engrossing and mesmerizing that the information it is supposed to introduce becomes secondary and uninteresting. This is where I feel that bigger problems will arise. As we get increasingly wrapped up in the presentation of media and catchy graphic logos in motion, it is obvious that the Internet has shifted decidedly away from its initial and noble purpose of providing and sharing information. But the purpose is still there, and is inextricably tied to the nature of the beast that is the Internet. I would just hope that, with the emerging transitions in web page design and technology, that purpose does not get buried beneath a 3-D heap of animated trash.
Work Cited:
Black, Roger. "Help Me Redesign the Web." Technology Review, May 2007: MIT.
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