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!
