The use of Flash to create an entire website has died down over the years, but its use has far from vanished. Some sites may not be full Flash, but important elements such as logos may still be in Flash. While Flash may be ok (and just ok) for games or videos, full Flash websites are out of style, out of date, and not user friendly. Here are a few reasons to avoid using Flash on your next website.
- Bandwidth - Flash websites consume a lot of bandwidth. This hurts you, the web designer by increasing your bandwidth usage which leads to higher hosting costs. This also hurts your visitors that still use 56K modems (and a lot of people still do). A 1 megabyte Flash page will take more than 5 seconds to load, which means people who don’t have broadband may ditch your site altogether.
- iPhone and iPad Support – Any serious website designer should be designing sites that work well on smart phones including the iPhone. The iPhone does not support Flash, so if you do your site in Flash, it will not work properly.
- Browsers without Flash – Even though most web browsers support Flash doesn’t mean that the user has it installed. Most new browser installations do not include Flash with it, instead it is available as a separate download. Some inexperience computer users may not know how or why to download it, and some more experienced computer users may choose to not install it or block Flash by default. By using Flash, you are loosing the business of these people.
- User Experience – User experience issues can be a big problem in Flash based websites. This isn’t always Adobe’s fault, but it can be a real issue. A lot of times Flash designers incorporate GUI elements that don’t work the same as they do elsewhere on a computer. For example a scroll bar could scroll at a different rate, or a button could require double clicking instead of single clicking. Some Flash designers even disable the back button (which you should never, ever, ever do).
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – One of the biggest issues of Flash-based websites is the fact that they are not search engine friendly. Search engines cannot read the contents of Flash sites, so they cannot index them properly. Search engines rely primarily on the text on your web page, and if all the text is in the Flash file, the search engine will not see it.
So now you know why many people suggest avoiding Flash based websites. A Flash based video is OK, but a full Flash website just isn’t a good idea.
by Mike McKeown
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June 16th, 2010 on 4:09 am
The iphone 4 is very very nice! I am planning to get myself 1! However according to the news the 1st batch preorder is sold out… how sad!
What do you think about this latest iphone 4?
June 26th, 2010 on 9:20 am
It looks pretty cool… except you have to hold it right or the antenna doesn’t work right causing dropped calls. I call that a design flaw because its easy to drop a call this way.