Ten Reasons Not To Use Flash

Written by Amatocianmonk
2008-12-24
Do not design websites in flash!

Flash is not a tool for web design. Flash is a wonderful tool for tools to use on a website. It is amazing for games, movies, video players, animations, and other little web trinkets. But when it comes to using flash to design a website, flash fails.

Flash is detrimental to SEO, navigation, usability, and the overall user experience. The content of the site will never be indexed by any search engine due to the fact that bots mostly ignore flash elements and cannot read the content on them and when it comes to SEO, content is king. Users have no back button, they cannot inspect elements, and if they are on a mobile or text-only browser, it is as if your site doesn't even exist.

If you are the owner of a website and your designer wants to use flash to create your site, fire him, and hire someone who knows what they are doing.

Here is a list of the top reasons to NOT use flash:

Flash is bad for search engines.
If you want your site to appear in a search engine, don't use flash. Flash pages don't get indexed properly by search engines due to the fact that the bots cannot read the content on the page. You might as well have a website that consists of a title and some meta tags and no content as far as the search engines are concerned. It doesn't matter how pretty your site is and how fluid the animations are if no one will ever see it.

Flash pages can even be negative for search rankings. Search engines blacklist sites that have meta content that is not related to the site (for example, a page on design with keywords about comedy videos). And sites that are made with flash, as far as the search engines are concerned, have keywords, but no content, which may result in blacklisting due to the fact that any keyword is irrelevant to non-existent content.

Non-specific page urls
The pages of flash sites all have the exact same url (http://reallybadsite.com/flash.swf). No matter which page on the flash site you are on, it is always flash.swf. On regular websites, users can link and bookmark specific pages. No one wants to bookmark a website and then write a note to themselves that to get to the page they like they need to go to a flash page and then navigate to a specific area on that. Likewise, if a user likes a page and wants to share it with others, it is much easier for them to link to a page instead of linking to a flash app and having to tell everyone they share with how to navigate to the part they like.

No back button
The user was on a page that they liked, clicked a link to go to a sub page, decided they didn't want to be there and want to go back, they click the back button, and they go back. That is how it works on an HTML based website. How does it work on a flash website? Well the user can either try to figure out how the designer wants to allow them to go back, or they can reload the page and start from the beginning. But are bad options.

Poor design
Flash pages result in gratuitous design abuse. The internet has a standard. Navigation on the left or top, content in the middle, footer information on the bottom. It is a standard. Why bother trying to reinvent the user experience? Most users will get annoyed and older users will just give up and leave. If you want people to enjoy their stay at your site, show them what they expect to see.

Users have to wait for content
Unlike normal HTML websites wherein content appears as it is downloaded, flash pages have to download EVERYTHING before anything is showed. I don't mind waiting for a loading bar for games, or tools, but when it comes to web pages, content should not be delayed.

Splash pages
There was a time long ago, even before the days of flash when HTML websites were starting to use splash or intro pages. This was one of the worst web design aspects ever and thankfully had nearly become extinct... Until flash came around. Flash saw the rebirth of the splash page and a step backwards in web design and usability. Users visit websites for the content, not for the 45 seconds of swirling logos. The "skip intro" button is helpful, but why make users take another step before viewing your content?

Failure of basic text functions
Users aren't able to use basic internet text functions such as copy & paste, find (ctrl f), or text size changing (ctrl +/-). Users are forced to re-type any content that they wish to produce, so if a page has content that is worthy of being shared, there is little chance anyone will re-type it. Users cannot use Ctrl F to find parts of a page and therefore quality content is likely to go unseen. And users with disabilities are left in the dark, those with poor vision cannot enlarge the text and users that have to use on-screen readers are completely ignored.

Poor usability
Internet users are used to the standard web functions.
- Clicking on a link marks the link as visited and takes you immediately to the page
- Scroll bars act like the standard scroll bar on every other application
- Buttons look like buttons, forms look like forms, different cursers indicate different things (loading, text input, click able content)
- Navigation is at the top or left
- Et Cetera, there are many more standards
But more often than not, flash pages ignore these standards. Flash developers try to invent their own navigation methods, links are just areas you click on and don't offer any clues that you have been there before, nor can you hover over a link to see where it will take you. Scroll bars invented over the weekend are made to replace the custom widget that has been in use for years and years. Web standards provide a better user experience than what most flash pages offer.

Source code is invisible
One of the most brilliant things about the internet is the ability for people to learn from each other. When learning about programming and HTML, new users can examine the code of existing pages to figure out HTML basics. Flash gets rid of this. Share and share alike is one of the best parts of the internet, why try and take that away?

Bandwidth and CPU issues
Flash bogs down older computers and takes forever to fetch on slow to medium internet connections. This returns to the fact that if it takes too long to load, users will leave and if it runs slowly on the users computer, they will get annoyed and leave.

Flash isn't evil. It is a wonderful tool for designing widgets and games, and it is great for animations. The best video and audio players are flash. But it is not appropriate for websites.

Designers should always ask themselves if what they want to do could be achieved in HTML instead of flash. 99% of the time, the answer to this question is yes. The other 1% of the time, the developers should ask themselves if it is worth all of the faults listed above to do what they want, or if they would be better off changing their design to something else.

I will leave you with one last idea. The company that makes and distributes flash, macromedia, does not have a flash based website. Wonder why that is?

JamieB says:
2009-02-03

Nice article.

Agree in principle with almost all of it but I think point 4 is actually a positive. 'Gratuitous design abuse' isn't always a bad thing, I like it when some web designers try to push some boundaries.

Amatocianmonk says:
2009-02-03

Pushing the boundaries can be a good thing, that is how new waves of change come. However, the ratio of 'internet revolutionizing' design change vs 'this makes no sense' design change is a skewed one. I have seen several examples of websites that thought they were being edgy but in doing so made their sites unusable. With navigation that looked like ads and content that looked like it was part of the design causing the eye to skip over it.
I do agree with you that edgy design can be a great thing, but it can also be annoyance. In my opinion anyways