Dear Flash and Web Developers:

Please develop some manners. I know your client is a kick-ass new ska/rock band that just has to be heard, or a hip and trendy restaurant that insists on welcoming you with trip-hop, but don’t you understand the concept of surfing from work?

If I’m surreptitoiusly checking out your menu for a potential lunch sojourn, and the whole office finds out about it, I’m likely to close the window and forget the whole thing. Trying to dazzle me with your or your client’s alleged hipness, edginess, or technical prowress at the G4 only serve to annoy the living shit out of me.

I think it’s cool that you can embed a “multimedia” experience into a humble “web page,” but at least configure such content to be “OFF” by default.

Just as I don’t like being bombarded by superfluous and intrusive advertising: airplanes buzzing the beach, coupons that shoot out of plastic “bargain cannons” in the grocery store, and pop-under, pop-over ads, I also like to control what I hear and when I hear it.

I don’t think you band types would like it very much if I put a boombox next to you burrito-wrapping station and cranked it up whenever I thought something sounded “great” or grabbed the news weekly you web developer types were reading just to show you that I successfully compiled NetSaint on my iBook.