• Date: 2nd Feb 2011
• Category: Client Resources, Design & UX, Technology & The Web
• Comments: 0

All the time I hear clients ask for a Flash website or a website that has Flash interaction on it. Flash is a technology which lets you create fancy, interactive interfaces and websites. The following are some examples that clients will point to and say "this is what I want":

• www.hilltophoods.com
• www.dellmobile.co.kr
• www.effectiveui.com
• www.digaworks.com

"These are great works of creativity, you're out of your mind saying that these are bad websites", I can hear you screaming.

Well I would agree with you on the first point. They are great works of creativity. Call it art even. I admire the people who create such imaginative work and I could learn lots from them. However, I will stand completely firm in calling them bad websites. They are bad websites. Actually, they are not websites at all.

Flash Sites Are Not Websites

Firstly let me explain that these sites are not really websites. Yes, they may look and feel like websites but they are not. They are programs that happen to run in your web browser. Apps if you like. They don't play well with the Web and this means that they are often:

• Less usable. Most Flash sites completely re-invent their interface from scratch. This is not the case with traditional websites, which use common input fields, link behaviour, navigation patterns etc.
• Inaccessible. Web browsers who have eye-sight problems can use screen readers to consume content online. Screen readers are programs which, as the name suggests, read the contents of the page aloud. Screen readers cannot "see" any text on Flash sites. Hence you will never see a government website  that uses Flash exclusively.
• Bad for SEO. Even though Google has recently claimed that they are better at indexing Flash sites than in the past, it does not compare to regular websites. Flash sites appear lower in Google results than normal websites. Period.
• Harder to maintain and update. Traditional websites separate content from design making it easy to update one without affecting the other.
• Don't work at all on iPhone and iPad. Apple has rejected Flash as a technology on their mobile devices. The reason? They drain the battery and often suffer from bad usability.
• A lot more expensive to make. It takes more development time to re-invent the wheel every time than it does to use existing frameworks. Flash does have a framework (i.e. Flex) but even then you are left needing to re-invent most of the wheel. This extra development time equates to higher budget requirements for such projects.
• Doomed for a risky future. Another worry with Flash is that it is a proprietary standard owned by Adobe corporation. But then why should you care about this legal stuff? You care about the end product. This isn't really an important factor for you. Well sorry to brake it to you but yes it is, for the following reasons:
  • Proprietary products mean that us website designers need to pay Adobe for the software that is required to create Flash sites. Initially web designers fork out the money for the software, but ultimately it is the client that pays for it in higher design fees. Open source technologies don't suffer from this drawback.
  • It slows down progress and innovation of the Web in general. If we rely on one company to innovate our only web design tool then what's to stop that company from becoming lazy? What if the company goes bankrupt?

The Alternative

So how can you create engaging, aesthetically beautiful websites that work and don't suffer from the problems above?

Enter HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Yes, three different technologies. Each one specialising in a different aspect of the website.

HTML deals with the accessibility and SEO side of things, CSS with the design and visuals, and JavaScript with interaction. These technologies are used to build normal websites that integrate perfectly as part of the Web.

Some examples of HTML / CSS / JS websites:

• Google
• YouTube (uses Flash for video delivery but is working on alternatives)
• FaceBook
• Twitter

Ok these are popular websites but not exactly an example of beautiful, creative design. Take a look at Creattica and CSS Gallery for examples of those.

In (Slight) Defence of Flash

I have given Flash a bit of a beating in this post. Obviously it is not all bad. At a time when the regular way of building websites (HTML / CSS / JS) was very primitive, pale and boring, Flash stepped right up and offered something completely different.

At a time when most websites were just boring text and a few images, Flash gave us an alternative to create really immersive experiences. It has helped push the web forward as the standard technologies needed to catch up, and they did.

These days we have HTML 5, CSS 3 and JavaScript Canvas. It is possible to create really cool websites without Flash, and thereby without the drawbacks that I have listed above. Flash still has a few advantages over regular websites (3D support, access to microphone and webcam, nice font rendering), but the advantages are far outnumbered by disadvantages in my opinion.

Flash is not the future of web design, but immersive and creative user experiences using open source technologies are.