Bill Napier Design

Tadeusz Szewczyk, an author on fadtastic, a web design trends journal wrote an ariticle yesterday describing the demise of Flash.

He labels himself as a Flash developer turned CSS zealot. Mr. Szewczyk says that he started using Flash at version 3 and then stopped around MX. And he lists issues with Flash that he had as of MX. Here is a summary of his column, my comments are noted with //.

Reason 1: Flash ads.
Ask yourself from your own user experience: What’s the most annoying form of on line ads? …

//True, Flash ads can be annoying however, I would argue so are pop-ups, vulgar content, etc. There are is a lot of content out there which is not pleasing. Annoying content though doesn’t stop anyone from finding the information they need/want.

Reason 2: Search engine friendliness
… the overall majority of web sites truly depend on search engine traffic, foremost market champion Google. As I specialized on website optimization for search engines (also called SEO) I realized that making a Flash site means being virtually invisible for search engines.

//Search Engine Optimization is very important. I won’t try to discount that. However, I would argue that if you don’t rank in the top 3 or very least top 5 it doesn’t matter. Ideally you want your site to show up in the top results on the first page of Google. If it doesn’t then can you really count on someone going thru all the thousands or hundreds of thousands of results that Google presents to find your site. If you really want someone to find you, you have to do what you have always done. If you want them to call you, give them your phone number … to email, give ‘em your address and to see your stuff online you gotta get your url out there. You can’t rely on SEO.

Reason 3: Usability
… Even I as a power user prefer to navigate sites quickly without trial and error clicking anywhere and everywhere. Some flash sites really make me angry. You simply can not see where you have to click.

//Flash is not the problem with usability or navigation. Navigating a site, whether its Flash or CSS can be confusing … just like reading a magazine. Content can be presented in a clear and orderly left to right fashion (for applicable users) for easy navigation.

Reason 4: Accessibility
… It’s just not designed for the blind and otherwise impaired …

//This is an issue. But it isn’t one that Adobe can’t address. With the latest improvements in the Flash player and the stand alone player, you can’t tell me that they can’t or won’t incorporate accommodations for the impaired in the future.

Reason 5: Downward compatibility
When Flash 7 came out one of my clients called me on the weekend: My site does not work anymore! It turned out that using the latest Flash plug in, the plug in check would let you in and then show nothing, a completely white page. It was an easy fix but I have seen similar problems with Flash sites from then on.

//It was an easy fix. This point really isn’t valid. You will always have to upgrade regardless of your technology. Move on.

Reason 6: Overburdening developers
Flash not only failed due to a bad user experience. The demise is self made in as far as a new Flash version every year made your expertise obsolete faster that you could cope with the evolving software. Either you stopped doing everything else and concentrated on being a full time flasher or you ended up being not up to date. I just finished a one year long flash course making me a proud Flash and Action Script expert when Action Script became obsolete with AS 2.0. appearing.

// Everyone living today understands that technology is evolving at a pace that even software engineers and developers struggle to keep up. Do they give up? No, they just work harder. Its what we do, get over it.

Reason 7: Failed internationalization

Living and working in Germany but being of Polish descent made me quickly realize the limitations and US centric approach of Flash …

//Adobe is a San Jose, California based company. They do have offices all over the world. This is another silly complaint. Its kinda like complaining that Mercedes is German centric. Of course they are. And its a strong marketing point for them.

Reason 8: No compliance with open standards
As Flash is proprietary and closed source the business model of Macromedia and Adobe is to prevent competitors from grabbing the market share in this segment. When Adobe still competed with Macromedia (what was the name of the Adobe made alternative to Flash? …) you still had the hope that XML based SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) would replace Flash one day.

//Microsoft has released WPF/E (codename) Community Technology Preview which is capable of emulating Flash.

Want more reasons? John Dowdell of Adobe does a better job countering his arguments than I do.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 6:54 am and is filed under Flash. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.