I am surprised that even new websites are setup in such a way that you must wait for quite some time for them to come up or for you to move around from one page to another.

Successful websites don't waste your time because they understand that time is money and on the internet a lot of people are in a hurry so the average user will probably hit the back button than keep waiting until the website comes up.

Simplicity and animations can co-exist, focusing on one to the detriment of the other is counter productive.

Is a website is not fast, easy to use and useful regardless of the amount of energy and money used to develop the website it will struggle to survive.

Yes!

Actually, for a perfect site, the load time should not exceed 8sec on a 128bs connection. Most of the sites are above that, I always want to create a site bellow that!

Hope our web designers and developers in the room will take note and improve the quality of our future websites!

ruffai:
There is always an exception to every rule. Having said that, I think, within the Nigerian context, the issue isn't with code weight per se but with flash abuse.

Use of flash in and of itself isn't bad. What is, is continuous animations and the use of unnecessary frames, both of which add up in size. In various conversations with people on this forum, "I do it so that clients know what I am capable of" seems to trump simplicity and common sense. Remember folks, we are supposed to be experts at what we do, not code monkeys or order takers. If a client insists on something and it seems to fly in the face of what you know to be right as a developer, be bold enough to tell them "no", even if it means losing out on the business. I have encountered this myself, even with Nigerian clients, at least twice. For the Nigerian client, I lost out on one and won on one. Of course, you let the client know in a professional, and not in a, "do you know who I am?" way.

I am not saying you shouldn't have flash on your pages. I am saying 1) you shouldn't abuse it and 2) you should use it in an efficient/common sense manner. On all sites I have done, the word, "simple" comes up in one way or another. My Nigerian clients in particular have always asked me something to the effect that, "how come your site looks so simple compared to other sites I have seen, yet so elegant? I like it". This tells me that the client isn't usually the problem per se. It is ignorance on their part. And as they say, ignorance is bliss. If they aren't educated, then they expect flash on every single site. In other words, just because, Okoronkwo has flash, by God, Okon must have flash on his.

Again, remember, you are a professional. Act the part.

As always, my 2 cents.

Of course - any web designer worth his/her salt would know that one needs to put the target audience into consideration when designing a website. I dont see how anyone would design a website with "heavy" pages for a Nigerian audience when bandwidth is too little on many [if not most] Nigerian Internet connections.
Such sites end up loosing visitors since some would be too impatient for the entire stuff to load.

Glad you guys feel the same way.

About taking the audience into consideration I find it hard to understand why quite a number of people are eager to implement video sites when over 90% of Nigerians can't even see the video due to bandwidth limitation not to even talk about serious video compression.

Uploading a video and playing it is as easy as uploading a photo and displaying it but again I ask "who are you designing for?"

The most important thing a serious web developer will find very useful is the ability to say NO to a client even when the money is tempting, not easy to do but pays in the end because the client may still come back to you after implementing and failing with another developer who may not be professional enough to advice the client on what works and what doesn't work on the web.

@ my2cents

Its true, flash do waste more visitors including me!

Besides, the web designers and developers believes flash will make site attractive and as well make their customers feel puzzled by their service.

Well, its time we should learn to make sites with minimum load time and ensure easy navigation and also minimize excessive graphics because they also add more load to your site!

Hope to see changes!

There is no doubt flash site are 'welcoming' and clients in Nigeria wants to see amination on there sites. It has happened to me several times. One would keep lossing clients if you always stand on your words and doesn't reason with the clients. You have to let the client know the implications of animations.
There was a site a did sometimes ago. The clients was go convinced of what he wanted and told me he wants his machines to be "marching" on the site. I told him the site would be slow and would take time to open, but he wouldn't listen, so i did what he wanted. This cost me to lose some clients too and when I visit some sites I created I see they tampered with and edited so badly.
Customers wants to see moving objects on their site.
Check the following sites:

<a href="http://www.bertolamachinetools.com">www.bertolamachinetool.com</a>

,

<a href="http://www.bertolamachinetools.com">www.soepropertiesng.com</a>

,

<a href="http://www.lagosstyle.com">www.lagosstyle.com</a>

.

Tunde

Flash in itself is a useful tool and very very cool when dealing with animations but again over use of flash or flash abuse is the problem.

The hammer can be used or abused by a carpenter.

Someone tried to show me something on a website he contributes actively to yesterday but the site couldn't come up. He looked at some other feature rich websites that come up in no time and was worried that there was certainly a problem with the one he wanted to show me.

While discussing with him he stated that there is this BMW animation on the main website that usually takes about 15 minutes to load and the question is this - how many people will sit in front of a computer to wait for 15 minutes for an animation to load unless there is a price reward like N10k?

Bottomline, he was being dazzled by the skills of a graphic designer to the detriment of the website the graphic designer is supposed help make useful and profitable.

The ability to look a paying client in the eye and say NO to a request based on sound professional advice is where the game is won and lost because if you fail to advice a client properly sooner or later the client will get that advice/education from someone else and when this happens be sure to lose that client for good.

wow,

I thought the animation at http://www.unionbankng.com/ was bad until I saw the stuff on bertola and lagos style. One word - carnival! broadcode, no offense to you intended. I am sure you did what the client wanted. However, especially for bertola (I know the owner and one of his children and it beats me he didn't give me a call. Oh well ), I almost forgot I was on a website and that I had to actually look for information. Tell Bertola next time you see him that on children's day and independence day, even the marching kids take a break once they have gone round the tracks

I know you have probably moved on from this site years ago and earned your millions, but moving forward, if you must use flash, I suggest you put a stop() once all the inventory is present on the screen (in the case of bertola, once the inventory completes the half-moon).

As Afam has said, atimes we have to be willing to put our foot on the ground and say no, even if it means losing millions, strictly based on principle.

Hey my2cent,
You should understand the way Nigerians think, we love entertainment too much. Most clients don't think about functionality, all they want to see are visuals. I know stop() but I use gotoandplay() as the client wanted. Check out http://www.soepropertiesng.com/ . I designed it before but someone else as tampered with the design and colours.

My2cents, can you show us a website containing flash animation do did yourself? It  would give us a better understanding of your abilities.

Tunde

I actually don't believe in using flash, though I know how to use it. Reasons:

1) Not SEO-friendly

2) Not accessible to screen readers

3) It lends itself to abuse (or, "flashterbation" as prodgalson would put it).

4) To be honest, on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being highest), my flash skill level is probably a 6 or 7.

5) Fortunately or unfortunately, I am a developer not a designer (not that there's anything wrong with that )

I am also a firm believer in simplicity. That means using as little graphics/animations as possible and stressing functionality over design.

Be that as it may, feel free to visit my portfolio page: http://www.acewebdevelopment.net/ace-portfolio/

Of the 11 or so sites on there, I believe I have flash on one of them: http://www.thechurchofchristatriverdalega.org/ . The reason I used it here? The preacher wanted a way to promote his favorite passages. He also wanted those passages to catch the eye. So what did I do? I created a bunch of animations, assigned them a number, then used PHP's rand() function to generate a random number. When you refresh the page, you will notice the passages refresh as well and scroll from right to left. I know, nothing special, but that (and other things along that line) is the most anyone will get out of me. I must say that I must be doing something right because I started developing sites on the side in December 2006 and excluding the 2 sites that belong to me on my portfolio age, I have 9 sites to my credit (including 3 sites for people in Nigeria).

I have lost some and I have gained some in explaining to people why I will and will not go beyond certain levels when it comes to flash, ajax and other technologies. You say, Nigerians love entertainment? Is this to be an excuse? I beg to differ. Years ago, Americans thought scrolling marquees were good and everyone wanted it. It took education of clients on the part of web develoopers/usability analysts to convince them otherwise.

Check out my site(s) and send me any suggestions/criticisms/issues. And by the way, if you go back and read my first post, I never implied that your flash abilities were to be doubted. As far as my abilities go, I don't need to show you what I am capable of to prove my point. My motto is: the more money you are willing to pay me, the more I will do. That is why I ask a client what their budget is upfront. If I told them say, N100K, they will most likely run, without bothering to ask what comes with the N100K.

As always, my 2 cents

I recommend the following;

1. Optimise you graphics.
2. Don't make your page stand tall. Anything within 750 x 650 is ok. If need be then link to another page
3. Avoid using flash movie (especially those with many frames) and effects except very neccessary.
4. Compress you pages whenever you notice it is heavy.

Good luck!

All I have to add here is that we should continue to learn and enhance our works. There are no strict rules in web design as far as I know, just common sense, durability, size and skills are important. The smaller the size of a page and graphics, the faster it downloads.

Kudos to all the real "WEBMASTERS" in Nigeria and Africa. We are improving and I beleive with time we would get there.

Thanks.

Tunde