Comments on: Why Doesn’t CafePress Use Flash?

By: Power

Power — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:55:17 +0000

If you check our site http://umadeup.com, you will see product constructor based on flash

By: CafePress returns from land of the dead | Michael Gracie

CafePress returns from land of the dead | Michael Gracie — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:41:13 +0000

[...] While CafePress is worried about staying up for the holiday season, Michael Arrington is wondering why they don’t use Flash. He must own Adobe [...]

By: Zazzle Rumor: Big Hedge Fund Investment | Tekjuice.com

Zazzle Rumor: Big Hedge Fund Investment | Tekjuice.com — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 01:22:05 +0000

[...] company competes with CafePress and [...]

By: Zazzle Rumor: Big Hedge Fund Investment | Tekjuice.com

Zazzle Rumor: Big Hedge Fund Investment | Tekjuice.com — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 01:22:05 +0000

[...] company competes with CafePress and [...]

By: PowerPete

PowerPete — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 20:13:32 +0000

Our site: http://www.uniprint.se Click on “PrintStyler™” and start design or upload your own design to the shirt.

/Peter

By: » Chiplab In Tech Crunch

» Chiplab In Tech Crunch — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:05:07 +0000

[...] Why Doesn’t CafePress Use Flash? [...]

By: Rama

Rama — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 23:15:29 +0000

Great Question Michael!

CafePress should provide tools that enable their users to customize the Shirts with ease. CP has a few different designers and one of them uses flash.

It’s important to understand though that people with diverse skill sets visit CafePress and they need different kinds of tools to be successful -.

a) A Seller with specific design ideas normally prefers using industry standard tools like Photoshop to create their designs and prefer a simple interface to upload it and tweak it online. The main site caters to these Shopkeepers. Simplicity is the key there.

b) Some Non Tech savvy folks also prefer a simple interface. If the tool provides too many options and asks too many questions it gets overwhelming. CafePress’s Create and buy flow addresses their needs.

c) And then of course there are folks whose creativity rises with RIA tools. Flash or Ajax or MS Atlas…I love playing with these technologies and I feel empowered when I get to use them. For such folks their is http://www.click-shirt.com. It is a Flash based tool created by Bret, a developer in CafePress Developers Network. It’s in Beta. It hasn’t been publicized much yet.

CafePress recently announced their Content APIs (www.cafepressdn.com/api/content) so people can create design applications suitable for their users using any technology. The designs can be customized using SVG (an industry standard). The APIs are restful, raw XML.
A recent addition is http://cafepres...ol/TextDesigner. This tool is using MS’s atlas framework.

Technology is a tool (a great tool) to solve a problem, not the end. Its important to understand the customers strengths and limitations and provide solutions using the appropriate technology.

Happy New year everybody!

By: joe

joe — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 23:16:00 +0000

I think the reason they don’t do the designer thing is they are targeting communities that want to monetize their user base…. like rock bands, organizations, etc. They probably see more money in this space than having product builders for one-offs. the whole one-off thing is pretty difficult to build and I’m guessing would be fairly low revenue.

I personally think they should create an API that lets anyone use them as a back end merchandise shop… this way anyone can create any interface they want and use CP to do the credit card/fulfillment. Companies like Zoomr/BubbleShare, comic strip sites, etc could hook in easily via an API.

By: boffo

boffo — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 07:14:32 +0000

Cafe Press tried to create exactly such a flash-based tool about a year ago … and failed miserably. I heard about it from an informed source. They couldn’t get their shit together, and ended up ditching the entire project in the end. Total jokers.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 05:42:25 +0000

I've seen a preview of the Stagr.com website and it's Flash based widget for designing your own shirt is pretty impressive.

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 15:45:33 +0000

“Magic seeing eye deck”, gotcha covered, right here:
http://www.ellu...deck.htm?cat=40

Beautiful stuff, but no empowering RIA customization, sorry.

(I’m getting a kick out of the comments too… next thing you know they’ll be putting fluoride in our water or something….

By: Drive:Activated : Christmas spirit, Drive:Activated style

Drive:Activated : Christmas spirit, Drive:Activated style — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 15:42:04 +0000

[...] [...]

By: Bert Grantges

Bert Grantges — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 15:18:37 +0000

A buddy of mine just implemented a psuedo design tool for his T-Shirt site.

http://www.innertee.com

still has some quirks but its getting the idea there. Its not a full fledged design tool, but more along the lines of what some of the other folks have been commenting on. It allows you to upload your own illustrator files to put right on the t-shirt.

By: johnbtes

johnbtes — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 05:50:15 +0000

Forget the chips, I want customized cards. How about a “magic seeing eye” deck. Hmm.

By: Kosso

Kosso — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 02:22:45 +0000

I agree – and also why doesn’t http//blograffiti.com use cafe press? v.2 on the way for users. cafepress would be great for one-offs. no cheap though.

By: James

James — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 01:49:10 +0000

if they used flash, they might be as sweet as:

http://www.stagr.com

style and graphics from the founder of Zappos.com

By: billy

billy — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 01:35:55 +0000

ED –

Your rebuttal avoids the point. There are two tradeoffs here:

1) Maximize Audience (W3C standards) vs. Maximize Features (Flash/proprietary)

2) Independent Development Organization vs. Vendor-Captive Organization

I’m arguing that maximizing audience while maintaining flexibility of their development tools is a good thing for most development shops. And developers seem to agree to some extent: witness the success of multi-vendor Java. If they can do the job in a way that maximizes audience while staying off the Flash upgrade treadmill, I think the burden of proof is on the other side. Why use Flash? Are there competitive threats that would make them choose to reduce their addressable market and lock into a specific platform?

Flash may be a useful tool for some, it is NOT the Web.

By: Marcello

Marcello — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 01:17:28 +0000

Maybe my memory is hazy, but doesn’t 99dogs use a Flash editor? They seemed a lot better than cafepress when I was looking into such companies a few years back.

By: David Mackey

David Mackey — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 00:48:00 +0000

Mmmm…Customized casino chips, just what I always needed. But yes, it would be great to see a redesign with fuller feature sets of sites like CafePress and Zazzle. I hope your suggestions are heeded.

By: willy mo pena

willy mo pena — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 00:01:28 +0000

arrington is a nerd

By: mutt

mutt — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 22:27:19 +0000

Asking “Why use Flash” is sorta like asking an architect “Why use wood”?

First, the architect is making a choice of materials to fit the needs of the project. Do the properties of wood satisfy the practical and aesthetic needs of this specific design? Should I use steel instead? How about stone?

Second, the question “Why use wood”? is less interesting than the question “Okay, wood is the best choice for this application, but what type of wood should I use”?

My point is, a forum like this should be asking, “Okay, if I have made the decsion to use a platform that uses the Flash plugin, which one… OpenLaszlo, Flex 2, ActionScript 2, ActionScript 3?

Come on, let’s take this dead end “I hate Flash / I love Flash” religous war up to a higher, more interesting level

By: Robot Dean Martin

Robot Dean Martin — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 21:14:07 +0000

I didn’t even know that there were sites that allowed you to make customized poker chips. I’m glad I do now. That’s awesome.

By: Survival Shows

Survival Shows — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 20:36:28 +0000

Ya’ll need to unbunch your panties and get a beer because you sound like wired high schoolers rambling on.

By: Bret

Bret — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 20:15:25 +0000

As Ami pointed out, there is a Flash-based CafePress tool, called ClickShirt:

http://www.click-shirt.com

It’s fairly new and hasn’t been publicized much, so not many people have heard of it yet.

By: TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » なぜCafePressはFlashを利用しないのか？

TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » なぜCafePressはFlashを利用しないのか？ — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 20:13:41 +0000

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