6 Places that Flash Does Not Belong
33 Days Ago
–> Written by Samuel in Website Building

It’s recently occurred to me that I’ve been doing Flash sites now for 10 years and have seen it come a slack way since Flash 4, where I first cut my teeth on Actionscript, tweening, and pixel fonts. Over the years, I’ve seen and done many projects, some of which utilized Flash in very useful ways, while others had nay business using it. Sometimes, a Flash implementation hurt the company, detracted from the site’s purpose, and had poor results (all the while costing them more to build the site in the frst portion). So in a world where too many companies stand in need of Flash websites and overmuch few designers use Flash very well, here is a brief edge of places that Flash currently does not belong (with very few exceptions):

1. Website Intros
Let’s arrive the obvious out of the way. Websites last for their visitors, not the other way around. I see almost no use ever for a Flash intro (or really, any website intro), unless your website military science includes annoying visitors and emaciation other tribe’s time. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have a decent preloader or a smooth transition into your site, but anything more than a second or two of Flash before the actual location is a bad idea.

2. Sites with SEO Objectives
Although it’s possible to get semi-decent SEO rankings in certain situations despite a Flash site, you’re just not going to achieve the kind of SEO good luck for a Flash seat that you can for an HTML equivalent. Granted, SEO isn’t an easy game to play verily if you don’t use Flash (see our SEO tutorial), but whether your website strategy has any SEO expectations, stay away from it.

3. Menus/Navigation on an HTML Site
Menus have a singular and key function on every website — to get visitors quickly to the content they want. The wrangling “bonny,” “unexcited,” or “smooth” should never be in the identical league as “accessible” when it comes to navigation. A Flash menu runs the risk of leaving many users stranded (not everyone has Flash, including an increasing user cheap that surfs with changeable devices). Furthermore, search engines won’t get around too well on a website that lacks true links for its menus. And if you really can’t conduct one’s self without the “cool” menus, there are more than plenty DHTML/Javascript based menus that can transform simple think proper tags into great looking navigation systems.

4. Informational/Content Sites
A couple years ago, I did a website for a large church organization that had dozens of menu items and many pages of content per menu item. They insisted on a Flash locality to which place you not had to employment the browser scroll, and at the same duration of one’s life, it should look just parallel an HTML site (which of course, begs the trial, “Why are we using Flash?”). Needless to say, they ended up with a very clumsy website that costs much more than an HTML site, both to build and maintain. Furthermore, visitors complained in various places the site usability, preferring even a simple text-only site where they could actually get the knowledge of facts they wanted. In general, you’d be surprised how often a visitor will take information accessibility over a great-looking Flash one. If your website’s primary purpose is delivering informational contented, avoid Flash.

5. E-Commerce
Anyone who has followed the development of the Flash platform will concede that it has come a dilatory way in terms of functionality and programmatic flexibility. With the advent of Flex, Flash is more equipped for application-type usage than ever before. There are even some really great-looking examples of stores built on Flex. However, I think Flash for e-commerce should still subsist avoided for couple principal reasons:

a) Flash stores can still be pretty complex. Your typical HTML e-commerce site is straight-forward by a catalogue, account, and checkout system, all of which can be edited and modified independently with relative ease. Although a Flash store will accept the same basic components, you’re still conduct through a platform with more integrative complexity and less room for error. In the last few months, I’ve come from one side of to the other two websites that have attempted to implement a Flash e-commerce solution. On both, I managed to somehow find a weird functionality bug, and having missed faith in the site, went elsewhere for my purchase. So unless you have a great Flash developer and a solid understanding of consumer UI, stick to non-Flash e-commerce with respect to at present.

b) E-commerce conventions are very potent. For the extreme decade, online shoppers have become accustomed to how e-commerce sites work. Any great derivation from what they’re used to will often be the effect in lower ROI. Although some Flash carts look really snazzy and have more functionality than their HTML counterparts, the proof is always in the customer regeneration rate. And having worked on and seen sites that have attempted both types of carts, unruffled “ugly” HTML e-commerce sites will often outperform Flash carts. Online consumers are used to clicking on items, not dragging items to a “cart section.” They want to ratchet “Add to Cart” and “Checkout” and go from page to page. Sure, this may change in the coming years, and yes, innovation is a good thing, but e-commerce conventions still hold too strong a sway to go with Flash e-commerce honest yet.

6. Sites Requiring Heavy Management
Although Flash has a few solid options for content contrivance, if you or your client will be constantly editing a website, Flash can easily become more of a hurdle in guardianship it updated. This is mainly because clients always end up wanting to edit more than you tell them is possible. And in that place are few things worse in a freelancing business than maintaining parts a Flash site for years. If you know a client has high maintenance needs, make sure you address such future issues before even starting the locality.

Of course, there are some websites in which place Flash can be a serviceable choice or at least a “possible” choice. Some such sites include portfolios, promotional sites (movies, product “exploration” sites, etc.), sites with videos or games, and small boutique sites for creative agencies or possibly high-end design products (and even in consequence, it’s never a bad idea to have either each intermediary HTML portion or a full-fledged HTML version). Just dress in’t ever forget that every website has a primary purpose, and allowing that Flash doesn’t give to that, it’s probably a detriment and a liability.