Hold That Flash

Well now that the first election of 2006 is over, a few thoughts on how the Internet provided information to us.

I’ve been following British elections using the BBC and Guardian websites, which were elegant and efficient in how they delivered breaking information.
In Canada, with the last 2004 Election, I forewent my usual radio and Tv surfing for results since I discovered that between the Globe and Mail and the CBC, web-based results services gave me much faster and deeper results than the usual talking heads, with a ticker-tape banner of highlights.

Indeed the web seemed to be further ahead than the usual commentators who would go on air burbling about things that the ticker line revealed to be incorrect.

So last night, I turned my Firefox to both the Globe and Mail and the CBC, only to be amazed at how heavy the traffic was – and how interminably slow all of the flash-laden detail was to load. There must be a ton more folks getting their election results on the web this time than last.

The Globe’s maps were wonderful when eventually they loaded though it was like one of those tests for colour blindness to distinguish between Tory blue and Bloc bleu.

Eventually, I just moved to Radio Canada which had all of the constituency results placed into a table, with the data feed refreshing every 15 seconds.

Flashy? No. Elegant? Not terribly. Effective? Absolutely.

It reminded me that the over-use of flash within lawfirm websites can be a barrier to information access.
And that’s why – for the next election of 2006, I’ll be on Radio Canada from the outset; and why I still fear flash, while enjoying it when it works well – and in the background.