Storing content in flash movies is a bad idea. Implementing your websites navigation in flash is a bad idea. Flash websites always have ridiculously small font which you need a microscope to read. Lets just face it – Building a flash website is a bad idea.
Flash websites are the websites were pages flip, twirl and music blasts from your speakers, and you sit there for what seems a life time waiting for it to load. Web designers over the years had been trying to convince clients into flash websites as it gives them more freedom and creativeness to do what they please. But are now finally coming to the renationalisation of just how bad flash websites really are.
User accessibility
The facts when building a website with flash:
- Flash doesn’t offer speech options for the blind
- The iPhone/iPad is unable to show flash websites
- Text size is not changeable for people with poor vision
- Flash websites also requite ActiveX plugins to be installed on their computer
I find it hard to believe that such a platform (flash) does not support these key accessibility features and trust me there is a lot more of them.
Search engine accessibility
After spending a few thousand getting a flash website built I’d assume you would want to have a good ranking on Google? Well considering Google ranks websites that are most relevant to what is being searched by analyzing the content. The chances of your website being ranked high or even in the first 1-4 pages are now very slim. The reasons for this are that how is it possible for Google to read the content on your flash website as the content is apart of a movie. No matter how smart Google technology may be, as of now it is impossible for Google to be able to read text that is essentially an image.
But I love flash!?
Flash is a dying platform and is slowly being used less and less, but for you who just can’t get enough of the smooth transitions and animations of flash the answer is HTML 5. It has the capabilities of flash while also being 100% user and search engine accessible.
HTML 5
To view HTML 5 software you need to have the HTML 5 compliant browser i.e (latest versions of) Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari.
Download latest version of Firefox (Recommended)
Examples of HTML 5
So if you are needing a website for your business please ensure that you do not get a flash website, for the sake of yourself and others it is a bad idea.
Tags: flash is a bad idea, flash websites, html 5