Sean, felt that I had not fully expressed his views so with his permission I am quoting verbatim from his emails so that his full opinion will be expressed and not just what I thought was important.
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On Jan 11, 2009, at 1:06 PM, John Griffith wrote:
Sean,
There is a discussion in the GetDPI forum thread titled "Hey G1 Fans" in which your and other paid sites is being debated. The biggest complaint about your site is the use of Flash as the delivery/user interface vehicle. I have to admit that I don't care for it either. It occurred to me that I have never heard your reasoning and that in fairness to you we should hear your side of the story. The other thought I had was maybe you weren't aware that you were losing some subscribers because of that interface and that if you knew you might consider changing to a more user friendly interface. I would certainly like to hear your views on the subject.
John
John Griffith
[email protected]
Hi John,
Thanks. I don't participate on that site but I am aware of the discussion as I've gotten several e-mails. It's in Flash for content security - not perfect security but better than html. I have a site developer and if we find a web medium that works better - yet is at least as secure, I'll look at it. I talk about the site format in the subscription instructions so that people can know the details ahead of time.
Meanwhile, I'm up to my ears in prepping content which is always the heart of the site to me.
Cheers,
Sean
BTW, despite the pros and cons of Flash the site's renewal rate has been quite good since it started. The interface isn't perfect but its not awful either and I personally like the complete lack of ads. Adding a search feature would be great and a linkable table of contents is in the works.
Cheers,
Sean
Hi John,
I just saw your post. Flash may be a problem for some but my point, overall, was that most people seem to get to the content pretty well. I also mentioned that I would consider other web mediums as well (if they provided security) but you didn't mention that in your post. I also said that most of my energy right now is going into the content of the site.
It's interesting how things get filtered and translated.
Cheers,
Sean
BTW, though, thanks for the comments on my photography.
Cheers,
Sean
Sorry, I should have copied and pasted your post. I didn't mean to leave out your other comment but since it seemed tenuous I did not want to give the impression you were about to change either. I did some experimenting with your site and what I find is that on Safari it is very slow and does not scroll easily from the mouse. On Windows with IE or Firefox it isn't so slow. Since many photographers use Macs and Safari you might want to test and compare using both IE and Safari. Apparently Adobe did not build the same performance into each Flash plug-in. If you like I will correct the post since I don't mean to give the wrong impression for you.
John
Hi John,
That would be great, thank you. As I said, I am interested in looking at other ways of presenting the site but more pressing to me is the need to finish up the many reviews and articles that are already in progress. I'm swimming in Zeiss lenses for example. Given the choice of halting new content to focus on the site format vs. finishing these articles, I favor the latter.
The slowness of the site, to whatever degree it is there, largely has to do with the fact that the pictures are compressed at level 9. That's not usual but it is done for good reason. I view the site primarily using Safari on a Mac Pro and it doesn't seem that slow to me over DSL.
The format of the site is important but I also think there's a danger of people fixating on that and overlooking the heart of the site which is the content. The approach, the essays, they're what I care most about.
Cheers,
Sean
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This should clarify any confusion I might have caused.