It sort of caught me by surprise, but there's apparently a lot of people using Flash for headlines these days - ESPN, ABC News, Movies.com, and probably others.
I won't go into the history of this technique, but if you're curious, you can read more about it from Mike Davidson. He also has a demonstration of the technique.
I understand the desire to incorporate more typefaces into your site to enrich the Web experience, but I fear that this method is too easy to drop in to an existing site and that people will do so without considering all of the consequences. Most importantly, the site designer and ONLY the site designer has control over the fonts being used, the colors of the text, and the size of the headline.
There also appear to be a few bugs in the display of these headlines, at least on Linux (Flash player 6.0.81). The background of each headline is bright green, as though they are transparent GIF images that have had a few bits flipped. Sometimes the headlines don't even appear (as on ESPN's Web site). On the ABC News site, there is some seriously strange JavaScript weirdness.
I've never particularly liked Flash, and this might push me over the edge. (Well, that and the advertisements.) It has its uses, certainly, but there are few instances in recent memory where Flash has added to my experience on a Web site.
This is partly due to the fact that Macromedia's support of Linux has always been a little half-assed. There was a time when we were a full major version behind (we were stuck with version 5 for a while after version 6 came out), and audio/video sync has always been somewhat off - but to Macromedia's credit, it is getting better. (It makes sense for them to produce a decent version of Flash for Linux, since developers will be less resistant to using the technology when working side-by-side with Web designers.)
Time to install the FlashBlock plugin, I guess.
Posted by dwc in Internet at 04:39 PM