If what he says is true and he has a thriving business based on his offering to his clients, then those people who buy his product and his thoughts about the Web and things like Flash and who benefit in the process should just keep doing what they are doing. It is obviously working for them. The rest of us see value in all the stuff he condemns and wouldn’t touch his content builder with a virtual barge pole (well, except the so called “script kiddie” who walked in through McLaren’s open back door (aka his admin area on his site) and did some damage to the site). We may all be hopelessly misguided in our slavish use of Flash and “wow factor” design elements but that stuff tends to work on the Web today. Besides, I like that sort of thing.
I note that McLaren won’t use Flash and yet he uses YouTube to promote himself. YouTube runs on Flash, among other things. Why not just post the video directly on his site using some sort of non-Flash interface or, better yet, post a download link to the video. He malign’s Blogger and WordPress as expensive or as too technical for most users (both contentions are false) and yet he ran a blog of his own on Blogger until June. Ugh! At this point I am just ranting. This sort of thing irks me to no end because it is all just a lot of hype. In a couple days time we’ll get back to talking about people and issues that have real meaning for us. I do feel bad for people who have bought his solutions and who don’t have a full picture of the Web and what works on it. What I do take issue with is this sort of comment on McLaren’s site:
Nic Harambulous, harabuloco? how to spell the name? I am not going back to look at his blog now has an issue with my web design ability. Most people know that I am a functionalty before pretty type webdesigner. It’s results I aim for not impressing webdesigners with how pretty and inefficient my productions are. It is not that I deny that my efforts may at times seem previous millenium, the thing is I built websites in that era and the rules remain unchanged. Because my sites use minimalist coding technique, the load faster. Because we don’t do flash our sites offer information not pretty movies, does that make them bad.
I guess its the results that you need from the website that are important, not how much it impresses some narcissist masturbator that thinks that sites need to be flashy rather than give results. Here on this site we care about getting results for our clients, not wasting money on unnecessary plastic surgery.
These comments are defamatory and just not on.
As for the defacement of McLaren’s site, that really isn’t appropriate or legal. That being said, I think I can empathise a bit (not that I would do that sort of thing … disclaimer … disclaimer … disclaimer).
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What do you think?