stay dirty
For All the Flash Haters
by admin on Jun.01, 2009, under Miscellaneous
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We’ve been noticing more and more lately, at least on a local level, that some design shops do their best to either downplay Flash or totally avoid it entirely. They talk to the masses, extoling the virtues of simplicity and a more non-interactive approach.  They speak about it like it’s a bad thing to have high impact graphics or a rich user interface.
Personally when i hear things like this, it brings to mind the old George Carlin comedy bit regarding people who complain about abortion being people you wouldn’t want to sleep with in the first place. The only reason to downplay this technology that is starting to truly permeate the web, is if you can’t do it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using flash as part of the development of a website. Many developers will use the SEO angle or lack there-of, to explain away using flash. That argument holds little or no water anymore (see…http://www.adobe.com/devnet/seo/). There is plenty of info on making your RIA SEO friendly.
So customers don’t be afraid, MudBrick’s got your back on the Flash side.
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When will it stop….hopefully never
June 28th, 2009 on 12:12 am
I hate flash because when my screen is 24 inches from my face, and starts moving around, I get a motion sickness. Also, I don’t like waiting for flash to load, especially when I am on a 10MB download speed fiber optic connection. WTF? Is it too much to ask to keep the filesize of the swf files lean? Also, while flash developers could take the time to accommodate disabled people or visually impaired users, most don’t care about accessibility in the slightest bit. I have made sites that use flash, and provide alternate content for people without Flash player, and even without javascript. Why can’t anyone else do it? I don’t think Flash is the problem… it’s really that the majority of design agencies don’t take the time to do it right, because they just want to get it done so they can bill the customer. (and the customer just wanted to look modern). OK, I do have one thing I like about Flash; I get a lot of customers contacting me for a redesign of their website because their current site is Flash and won’t show up on Google.
June 28th, 2009 on 11:15 am
I’m a Flash hater. While watching a video is no problem, the motion on the screen that is involved with using Flash makes me have motion sickness.
You may be right about the SEO of Flash, but from what I’ve seen, nearly 0% of developers who implement Flash in their sites have provided alternate content for accessibility (or for those without FlashPlayer)(or for those without Javascript enabled (because Flash Player detection is usually done with Javascript)).
Last, but not least, I’m on a 10MB download fiber-optic connection, and when I have to sit and wait for Flash to download, I’ve gotta wonder what the developer was thinking when they allowed the Flash to get so bloated. Most standard HTML pages are in the 10KB neighborhood, and with images, CSS, and javascript, most don’t even approach bloated compared to 99% of the Flash sites out there.
The only Flash site that I think is cool is Adobe’s Kuler color wheel site, but then you’d sort of expect that from the makers of Flash.
June 29th, 2009 on 8:26 am
Hey Rob, i’m understanding of some of the issues you bring up but most are directly related to shitty flash dev’s not doing their jobs effectively.
Flash dev’s need to do their homework and make sure the file sizes are under control, use externally loaded .swf’s where necessary and put into practice those SEO techniques. It’s also always goo to have non-flash based content for those without the plugin or on a mobile device.
I think flash can play nice and we are just a little tired of it getting the bad rap it gets.
January 3rd, 2010 on 9:46 pm
Man, great post pertaining to search engine optimization. This si definitely better than anything I’ve ever seen posted by M. Cutts.