RE: 5 Reasons to NOT Use Flash in Your Website
Posted by Matthew Hancock
Opinion April 7th, 2007 at 11:36 pmAn article on the blog “Behind the Curtains” lists 5 reasons to NOT use flash on your website. The real question is can you trust a Contemporary Furniture, Kitchen, and Bathroom blog to give you Flash best practices? Let me address their issues from a slightly more technical position.
First of all, the article states that less is more when it comes to design. This is true in most cases, although you will always have exceptions to this rule. Flash is best used sparingly, but there are some very effectively created “ENTIRE” Flash websites out there. There are disadvantages to using flash to create your entire website, but many of these disadvantages can be overcome with a little effort and research.
1. (Readers can’t hit the back button.) This has been a complaint since Flash was known as FutureSplash Animator. There are several good tutorials out there explaining how to enable the back button in your flash movies.
2. (Link colors don’t work.) This is true, to a point. As a Flash developer, you have to keep web standards in mind as you develop. If you feel that it is important enough to put in the extra effort, you can create your flash movie to mimic the link colors, rollover colors, and visited link colors the way that typical HTML does.
3. (It’s not truly interactive.) This one confused me a bit… The article seems to imply that Flash is not truly interactive because you can’t go where you want to go or download pictures of things you like. They claim that flash limits your interaction. The only thing that flash really limits is your ability to “steal” images, although a simple ctrl + print screen and Photoshop will do the trick. With flash you can still navigate anywhere that the author has created a link to… which is no more limiting than HTML.
4. (It’s not modifiable.) True. To my knowledge there isn’t a convenient way for a user to change the font size of your flash movie unless that functionality has been added by the author of the Flash movie. The times when people use these types of features (Find or Translate) are usually when there is a large amount of text on the page. A page with a large amount of text on it usually works best as an HTML page or at the very least HTML/Flash hybrid.
5. (It is overused.) I completely and totally disagree with this statement. Flash is NOT overused… Flash IS, however, overly misused. Flash intros are almost always an attempt to show off, and usually they are terribly obnoxious. That’s why I recommend avoiding Flash intros at all costs.
Bonus Reason #1. (Google can’t index the page.) True. This is one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome. This problem can be lessened significantly by using Flash on your website instead of creating your entire website out of Flash. If you must have your entire website created in Flash, you can create an accessible version of your site (for the disabled, mobile browser, and search engine spiders) that you will need to maintain separately from your flash movie. This can be a lot of work depending on the size of your site, but will limit the SEO problems you will have.
Bonus Reason #2. (It’s expensive and consumes more important resources.) Flash can be expensive if you hire big name designers and/or have a short timeline. If your audience is right for Flash, however, not using Flash could mean a lower rate of success from your web audience.
I understand that the “Behind the Curtains” article was written from the perspective of a typical web user, but as designers we can overcome many of these problems by implementing best practices in our work and paying close attention to what our web users expect. So, can you trust a Contemporary Furniture, Kitchen, and Bathroom blog to give you Flash best practices? In this case, for the most part, is yes.
April 9th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Hi Mathew
You make great points — and I will be doing a follow-up piece on 5 reason to use flash in a week or so.
My perspective is not just as a reader of these god-awful sites that overuse flash (I’ll give you a rundown of these hideous sites — so you can pitch them to redo them so they can become even remotely usable), but also as a web creator.
I have built numerous sites since 1995 — from daily newspapers to now Pure Contemporary.com — and we have definitely used flash. My current site has an interactive planner out of Flash — where the room sizes, walls and furniture can all be manipulated.
Where flash is NOT interactive — is when i am forced to see their opening vignette — or when I have to go through an entire product demo — and can’t fast forward to what I want to see.
Yes, if these sites were well designed, flash would be an important accoutrement. But they aren’t. Pictures are of poor contextual quality, not studio lit, fuzzy and can not be enlarged. If you only have limited resources, opt for studio lit shots in focus.
I could go on and on — but I am certain I am preaching to the choir. As I said, if you want the names of some hideous sites to prospect — i’ll be more than happy to point you in the right direction.
–diane burley, executive editor, PureContemporary.com
April 9th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Diane,
Thank you for your comment. I understand and agree completely. Flash a wonderful tool if used properly. I have indeed seen MANY terribly designed Flash sites out there and as a designer I aspire to produce work that far exceeds that level of quality. I think we agree that the problem lies with the way the tool is used and not the tool itself, which was what my article was attempting to portray. In response the the question in the opening paragraph of whether you can trust a Contemporary Furniture, Kitchen, and Bathroom blog to give you Flash best practices, the answer in this case is, for the most part, yes.