Flash, A Little Dab Will Do Ya’!
I wish people would stop using Flash for their entire website design. First of all, Flash slows my computer down to the point where I have to force my browser to close just so I can start browsing the Internet again. I lose the tabs I had open and that doesn’t make me a happy camper! Not all sites do this, I realize that. But there are a lot that do. Secondly, Flash is still not very usable to blind people. I have blind friends, they tell me these things. Third, if you’ve got several layers to go through to get to a certain point in your website, everytime someone visits your website they have to go through the entire thing from the beginning. You can’t simply bookmark the page.
The other aggravation that I’ve got is that sites that use Flash for their entire presentation tend to force you to open a pop up window to view the site. Not only do most browsers block pop ups by default, most people, at least I, don’t think to look for a button that says “click here to open.” Also, stop using splash screens! That is seriously old and annoying. With fast Internet connections people do not want to wait on your stupid splash screen to load and transfer the user to your real homepage. It’s not good for search engine optimization. It also annoys me! So stop it!
I am not completely against Flash. For streaming video across the Internet, Flash is the best solution. You can play flash content on Windows, Mac and Linux. For advertisements (THAT AREN’T ANNOYING) flash can be very good at getting your message across because you are not confined to just text and images. My point to this rant is to use Flash sparingly. I think it’s a great tool but I seriously think people are overusing it.
Tags: adobe, flash, rants, web design
September 28th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Totally agree with you on this one. There’s no need to program an entire site using Flash. Remember when lazy people used to build entire sites out of image maps? Lame.
September 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Shawno - Those sites that used image maps for everything always made me cringe as well. It was one thing to use it for your navigation (I still do on a few sites) but to use it for the entire website. That’s a huge no, no! Simple, Clean, Usable, Accessible; that’s my motto!
September 28th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
My sister’s company hired a web designer a couple years ago, and he built the ENTIRE SITE out of image maps. Thankfully, earlier this year I took over the site and switched ‘em over to WordPress. It’s nothing fancy, but at least it’s not all image maps.