10 REASONS NOT TO FLASH

Flash is one of the most powerful interface design tools available today, it brings amazing interactivity, video and audio elements to your site, and if used properly will leave your visitors in a pool of drool. e.g. relogcreative.com, davi-t.com e.t.c. But is flash the way to go for you? Adobe, the makers of the biggest flash development programs, have long lists of features and benefits for you to consider. Check them out, and then also consider the disadvantages listed here.

1. Poor mobile access.

Millions of users are now getting online using their mobile phones. It is convenient, always there, cheep and gaining popularity by the day. The average java browser in most mobile phones can not handle flash content and will simply ignore your flash website, thereby limiting your audience to those browsing on desktop or laptop computers.

2. Save and Print problems.

If you plan to use you site to deliver important information, avoid using flash. It is less portable. It is harder to save, print, or copy and paste content from it. Meaning your visitor either has to write down the required information from your site, or memorize it.

3. Not Search engine friendly.

When a search engine spider program visits your site it will be looking to read the content of your site, to store it in its database so your site and its contents can be found via searches. Flash is treated as an image by most spiders. Few can read its contents, meaning everything you put inside the flash site might not be seen by this spider, thus your site will be poorly ranked in search engines.

4. Costs more to setup.

Creating a Flash website is tough, not only do you have the standard colour and layout design considerations, but now you have to direct the animation, code for performance, create seamless transitions, create sequences for loading and displaying data, etc. Building a flash site can get very complicated, and there is a high premium on complicated work.

5. Costly Maintenance.

Updating a flash site is more costly than updating a standard site. You are also limited as you have to use the original developer to update that site. He will be the one with the source/project files needed to update the content, And he will be the only one who understands how the site was made, as each flash site is complicated in its way.

6. No RSS.

RSS helps you follow the updates to a page or topic on a site. If you subscribe to it, whenever there is anything new on that topic or page, it is sent to you. Flash content not RSS friendly. When you make changes to your flash site, RSS won’t work.

7. Bandwidth cost.

With much flash animating, video and audio streaming power, comes a great temptation to use it. Flash sites are not necessarily larger, but more often than not, developers or site owners get carried away and throw in every bell and whistle they can find. Bloating the site, and making it require a faster connection to enjoy the site.

8. Innaccessible.

Some features that the OS has to help people with disability do not work well with flash websites. Some of them can only be navigated using the mouse, they don’t have tab support. It is also difficult to change the font size of a flash site, or use screen readers on some of them.

9. Browser benefits off.

Flash makes it harder to take full advantage of many of the benefits if today’s browsers, e.g. creating bookmarks, basic navigation back and forth after clicking on links within the flash site, searching text within the page etc.

10. Little web 2.0 support.

Web 2.0 is a web philosophy where websites interact and grow their content from/with its users. This may be through blogging, leaving a comment, rating, etc. With flash it is not easy to enable users to contribute, share or grow your content.


All in all, flash has is strengths and weaknesses. You have to consider the sites intended objectives before you go flash. If after considering the benefits and disadvantages of using flash, and you decide to go flash, go ahead, knock them out and let us be the first to see your masterpiece.