Disadvantages of Flash Websites
Anything with Flash output is highly inappropriate for most situations. While great for games and other multimedia applications, Flash “web sites” have numerous usability problems such as:
- Inability to deep link to a page or article (nobody else can refer to your content effectively - the fabric of the Web becomes broken!)
- Limited indexing support by search engines (I understand this JUST started to happen despite Flash being around for a decade)
- Nonexistent support by accessible (audio) browsers - how do the visually impaired surf your Flash “web site”?
- Flash “web site” is not available to people of any other languages. Google and other services will translate your content on-demand for people from other cultures, I’ve used this many times for pages written in other languages myself and find it highly useful. This does not work with Flash.
- Navigational paradigm is typically broken with Flash. This is left to whoever plays the role of designer / information architect - with Flash, you can do all kinds of neat-o things with menus and navigation, so in an effort to be “cool” or “fancy”, the user gets to waste time learning a “brand new / new-and-improved” way of navigating your “web site”.
- It requires a plug in! “Nay!” you say, every desktop already has this! NOT. Linux 64-bit JUST got this this year. Mobile devices cannot read your page because for many devices, this plug in DOESN’T EVEN EXIST! Even if it did, it certainly isn’t pre-installed on the phone!
- YOU CAN’T PRINT THE STINKIN’ PAGE!
- Inability to deep link to a page or article (nobody else can refer to your content effectively - the fabric of the Web becomes broken!)
- Limited indexing support by search engines (I understand this JUST started to happen despite Flash being around for a decade)
- Nonexistent support by accessible (audio) browsers - how do the visually impaired surf your Flash “web site”?
- Flash “web site” is not available to people of any other languages. Google and other services will translate your content on-demand for people from other cultures, I’ve used this many times for pages written in other languages myself and find it highly useful. This does not work with Flash.
- Navigational paradigm is typically broken with Flash. This is left to whoever plays the role of designer / information architect - with Flash, you can do all kinds of neat-o things with menus and navigation, so in an effort to be “cool” or “fancy”, the user gets to waste time learning a “brand new / new-and-improved” way of navigating your “web site”.
- It requires a plug in! “Nay!” you say, every desktop already has this! NOT. Linux 64-bit JUST got this this year. Mobile devices cannot read your page because for many devices, this plug in DOESN’T EVEN EXIST! Even if it did, it certainly isn’t pre-installed on the phone!
- YOU CAN’T PRINT THE STINKIN’ PAGE!
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