Again, let me say I am not universally anti-Flash and the comments here are directed primarily at the news industry. I'd say they largely apply to most general e-commerce sites as well, though I recognize that there are several niche areas to which the following is not as applicable.

The problem, as I see it, is that WAY too many designers (and clients) have become so bedazzled by its shiny baubles and moving objects that they fail to recognize when Flash is the right tool for the project at hand, and more importantly, when it is not.

As news sites sluggishly approach the technology curve, this is becoming increasingly an issue in my world and inappropriate uses abound. Need examples?

Flash as site navigation
Bloomberg.com
Any user who can't load Flash packages¹ doesn't even know you have navigation. (I find this example particularly offensive since they appear to have done this for the sole purpose of a gratuitous mouseover graphic.)

Flash for Flash's sake
CNN.com: How hurricanes form
The tease from Hurricane Season splash page reads, "Fly into a hurricane aboard an animated interactive." What you get: Three graphics with cutlines. Two of the graphics have arrows which move, but the package would be no less compelling were it simply presented as three HTML pages with static images displaying the arrows. The actual movement of the arrows does not add to the understanding and on the second graphic it actually falsifies that data somewhat. If one were to view it very literally the blue arrows disappearing would indicate that the hurricane's rotation stops at measured intervals then starts again. A constant image of the blue rotation arrows would be a more accurate depiction of the situation. This strikes me as the perfect example of the type of package that comes about from the pressure to produce something in Flash for the sake of producing something in Flash.

The Flash photo gallery
I won't call anyone out on this one, because we've all seen it: the auto-changing images -- or worse, images of text -- fade or fly in and out and it's all set to music or a voiceover for drama's sake. Why this is bad: It takes away from users the very thing which makes the Web so powerful: the ability to access the information they want, when they want it, at the speed they want it. Stop trying to turn the Web into poorly produced television or cinema and give back control to the user. You have audio? Great! Build your photo gallery in HTML and give users the option of hearing it as they click through or not. If you insist on building it in Flash at least give users control over the audio and the ability to stop the show and navigate to images they want to see again without watching the whole thing over again.

Before you set out to build that package in Flash, ask yourself if it's necessary. Can the same end be reached using simple HTML? JavaScript? Are you inventing reasons to use Flash because it's "interactive"? By all means, consider Flash as one possible tool for building projects as they arise, but you should never *ever* be caught asking, "Hmmm, what can we do with Flash?" It's a simple matter of good project design: Here is our objective, here are the tools we might use, here are the pros and cons of each.... ah, here is the best solution.

Use the right tool for the job, not the Flashiest.

1 - This is more common than you might imagine and almost certainly more common than Macromedia will claim. I'm not sure a reliable number exists, but I believe the number of users who do not have and/or are not able to download the appropriate Flash player is still significant.

What percentage of your audience views your site from the workplace? This is the bulk of use on most news sites. Now what percentage of that audience is connected on a network and has admin privileges to download programs (i.e. upgrade to the latest version)? I don't know, do you?

My Jornada, which is running Pocket PC 2002, cannot handle Flash applications (or JavaScript for that matter). I'm guessing that a download is available somewhere but in order to get that I'd not only have to find the upgrade, I'd have to hunt down the cradle and sync it (ugh I'd rather just get my news elsewhere, thanks).

And I've already discussed the mysterious Mac problem and judging by the traffic passing through my humble little site from searches on "Flash won't load" or "Mac Flash won't load" or "Mac Flash plug-in" etc., it's not going away anytime soon.

July 15, 2003