Drawing the line without losing potential customers is a virtue.
Reflections March 17, 2008
I was checking out » Sources of Inspiration #2 (Insanely Creative Portfolios From Around the Web)) and definitely agreed with some of the sites being highly inspirational.
At the same time I stumbled over a site which raised once again some questions. The site I am referring to I loved at first sight: Lucuma Audiovisual. It is a Spanish site with a minimum of written words, gorgeous visual which attracts and interests instantly, and the implementation of the switch between pages is great as it is unexpected and really keeps you going on.
But, here comes the “but…”. As much I do understand that obviously their field is AUDIO and VISUAL and thus I can follow that they want to show off their work with videos - BUT if you do so, please think also about people who are currently not on a T3 line!
After watching for a few seconds the stuttering of the first and then of the second one, I lost all interest and that was that.
Worst of all, I am not even on a horribly slow line, we have here at home 10 megabit cable connection. Of course, one can argue that sitting in front of the TV with the laptop on my knees and connecting via Airport to the internet is the sole reason for this slowdown but I doubt it. And, I have a hard time imagining how long somebody has to wait to have the movie load on dial-up or even on DSL.
My point is: if you DO want to show off your work, why not have some option for people on slower connections to ALSO be able to see and watch? The site has been created so creatively, I am sure there would have been some option to integrate links to low resolution videos.
It is the same question of “how much do I care about older browsers, slower connections, older computer systems, how much am I going to remain backward compatible or how much am I working just for the jet set and the trend setters?”.
Even though I whole heartedly agree of drawing a line - isn’t it a pity if nobody but only high end speed connections or the most patient people get the option to watch (and enjoy) creative work?
First of all, thanks for the link!
I just wanted to add that I think that you may have had some stuttering issues because they are trying to maintain a high quality rate in their video. I can see why this is, most likely they want to keep the integrity of their work high.
~ Zinni
@Zinni: I agree. My issue here is that I wish for an additional link for a down sampled version. Coming from 3D and animation myself, I know there are many ways to minimize size of a movie without making compromises to the point of killing all quality. This post of mine was also a bit on my battle with myself of where to draw the line. Usually I am on the high end of speed, screen size of monitor plus W3C compliant browser - but having to deal for almost a year with the average computer user and environment, I wonder if disregarding the majority is truly the way to go.