Adobe Flash is no longer the go-to platform to develop rich interaction content as it once was. Developers are more enthusiastic about using alternatives like jQuery rather than turning to Flash. While I still think Flash has its place, I’m not promoting it or recommending its usage to my clients if other more straight-forward and functional options exist.
Many outspoken technology leaders and taste-makers have come out against Flash like Leo Laporte and Ryan Block. Laporte (of TWiT) has argued that because it is a closed platform, he prefers the public support the new upcoming rich media features that HTML 5 and CSS3 will offer. Ryan Block (of GDGT) is weary of Flash and feels its value is dubious.
Recently, Apple’s lack of iPhone support for Flash and the non-story that has been is telling in itself. A generation of web users using the most popular smart phone of the moment are adapting to the post-flash era… and enjoying it because it excuses them from “monkey-punching” ads and ridiculous impractical interfaces in favor of usable, readable websites.
From my point of view as a front-end web developer, I believe that people are flat out fatigued by Flash and prefer a more straight forward web experience. I’m not saying Flash is not useful, but please keep it to where it is best utilized and where web users expect that type of content. For example — streaming media, animations, advertising, mini-sites, movie-sites.
Adobe Flash at its best is a familiar environment where designers and developers alike can start to create so-called “rich” content with powerful animation and scripting tools. That means there are little limitations and the potential for creating spectacular interactive content is out of this world. The reality is that most people use it as a homepage slide-show and an excuse to introduce non-web safe typography. The innovation is not there for most cases and only a select few studios actually exploit the “ground-breaking” features of Flash.
Movie websites like Avatar are perfect for Flash.
Flash is at it’s best when the company at hand has the resources to deploy Flash media and is committed to delivering uniqueness and originality to the public despite the cost. The best example would be movie studios. They offer a premium product and are interested in presenting it to the public in a innovative way to promote the movie. The content lends itself to be a temporary spectacle and they ask studios to “go crazy”. In this instance, I believe Flash is the ideal solution.
So once again, Flash has its place but I think that finding a platform that doesn’t require a thousand dollar software investment to accomplish relatively simple tasks is in everybody’s best interest. The article below states the case of finding alternative methods for rich interactive content.
Flash Is Not An Open Platform
HTML, CSS, Javascript are open technologies that are independent of any company or business. The foundation of the internet is built on these open platforms and that is one of the reasons why it has become so intergal of our lives. Anyone can start developing websites with just a rudimentary amount of physical hardware, software and advanced knowledge of the platforms.
HTML, CSS, and Javascript frameworks are developed independently and are not directly influenced by profit.
For any developer to start using Flash as a solution they would need good hardware, expensive software and expensive training.
The real world implication of this for developers is that we are enslaved to Adobe and are subject to their decision making processes. Adobe is a publically traded company with profit as it’s core motivator. Product releases, features and support are all in their control.
As an example, at my studio we have to upgrade to CS4 because some of customers use it. We just upgraded to CS3 about a year ago and now we’re forced to upgrade to CS4 already! For such an expensive suite, you’d think that Adobe would allow CS3 to atleast read CS4 docs right? Nope. We’re completely handcuffed and the alternative is to ask our clients to save down for us… which is unacceptable.
The argument against this is that Adobe is implementing new features that older versions can’t work with… but who decides on the release dates? Who decides whether the features are worth our investment vs. actual usage? The answer is Adobe does and the reason they do it is to make more money.
The new versions of HTML5 and CSS3 are being thoroughly reviewed and approved by the W3C which works to create web standards and facilitate developers with the best technology to make websites.
[Edit: Sometimes proprietary software is not evil and the reasons vary. Adobe Photoshop for instance is the cream of the crop in terms of photo manipulation and although expensive — it has a long shelf life, incredibly useful for all types of image-based file formats and plays well with other editors. Another product for example, ExpressionEngine CMS — built a better mousetrap and they offer it at a fair price. Both proprietary, but they are able to overcome that by being fair, offering a better solution and co-existing with other technologies well.]
Accessibility Issues
Adobe has definitely improved this area of Flash over the years with natively exposing text to screen readers, the Accessibility panel and making most mouse-defined events available via the keyboard but it’s still not a slam dunk.
You can take steps to further optimize accessibility but they require a lot of effort. Considering most developers have a hard enough time doing this for non-flash websites, it’s not going to be a high priority. Do you see yourself making HTML equivalents, self-voicing, and text natively accessible? This often directly contradicts why you use Flash in the first place – ultimate flexibility and freedom to create rich content.
Even when using the acessibility features, the reality is that it’s going to be a jumbled mess to these viewers unless careful attention is considered for the animation from the start. Is it worth the extra development time?
Flash Is Difficult To Learn, Difficult To Keep Up With
Flash is an application that requires it’s own programming language, a blend of feature-sets that cross-over from other very different application environments and ultimately needs to be inserted into another type of file which is handled differently depending on the browser you’re using.
Seriously.
I like to think of myself as someone who endorsed Flash since the late 1990s and have taken college-level and continuing education courses with Flash superstars such as Josh Davis to keep up with it. Learning Flash and keeping up to date with it is monumentally difficult and my experience is that it’s not practical.
Flashkit is a popular tutorial website for Adobe Flash. It’s easy to learn how to be a Flash hack but being a true professional requires a true commitment to the platform.
The return on investment (ROI) is very low for most people because Flash is not used enough by most developers on a daily basis to justify the intense work you need to learn and keep current. Speaking for myself, I have enough to deal with developing best practice HTML/CSS websites on a content management system without having to jump into the intense, isolated and specialized Flash platform.
Which brings us to…
Flash Is An Expensive Proposition
Studios that specialize in Flash are expensive and deservedly so. Most designers are not capable of delivering high-quality Flash content because of the steep learning curve Flash often requires. That’s where these Flash studios come in to help your company out.
I worked in a company a few years back where the website was built entirely in Flash. The website supported a few retail locations and while not frequently updated, it was updated enough that the hourly charges for upkeep was definitely a hindrance. A simple notice of a sale or a PDF download required a couple of hours of work which we always tried to group together in a package of work for them to complete for us. The time wasted and lack of efficiency is just heartbreaking and the ROI (for the company) is rarely measurable over traditional methods.
Instead of putting all your eggs in one Flash basket… isn’t it more wise to be agile and versatile to current trends like tracking analytics, seeing the patterns and being able to quickly adapt, change and optimize? Bottom line, if Flash can’t generate measurable results for both the client and the developer, is it worth the effort?
The School of Visual Arts offers Advanced Flash for $900 as a Continuing Education course.
Flash Isn’t User Friendly
I hate upgrading my Flash player. I often skip any content I see that won’t allow my current Flash player to display it and I’ll delay upgrading for months until It browbeats me into upgrading. After a decade of this, I’m very tired of doing the upgrade dance.
It’s unacceptable to me that the content is unavailable to me even in a “gracefully degraded” version. For a product that is as ubiquitous as Flash has become, I find it ridiculous that I have to do something extra to make it work. As Flash is used to power interfaces and house actual content, it should not act as barrier to your content… EVER.
I have to come here, download, install, close the browser, open the browser…
I don’t believe stealing five minutes from my life to view Flash content is an acceptable practice. Flash is not user-friendly, the problem is we’ve simply gotten used to the idea we can be treated this way.
It’s Simple:
- Flash Is Not An Open Platform
- Flash Has Accessibility Issues
- Flash Is Difficult To Learn, Difficult To Keep Up With
- Flash Is An Expensive Proposition
- Flash Isn’t User Friendly
Tired of this?
In certain situations Flash may be appropriate but now better alternatives exist…
Alternatives:
jQuery has gained incredible traction from developers and contributors alike to create rich experiences with a light weight footprint. It’s available under MIT and GPL licenses for free and requires training in a non-proprietary language that is more useful than Actionscript.
Expression Engine is a CMS that offers a lot of great features that can replace some of the functionality that Flash offers. Not so much with moving graphics but randomization, colors and intelligence can help you offer rich content with out Adobe Flash.
Typekit allows you to use non web-fonts on your web page with just a single line of code. Typekit has garnered some early buzz and is made by web design veterans including Jeffrey Veen of Google Analytics fame. This is a better alternative than the “Flash Font Replacement” techniques out there (I know from personal experience, thank you very much) and a nice alternative to using Flash for typography purposes.
Google Analytics allows you to work smarter, not harder with your content. Replace Flash with a HTML based alternative and see what people are really clicking on. Build off of the data that you can collect and learn from it to deliver better solutions.
That’s the argument I’m offering in the case against Flash, please use what you feel is best to solve your client’s needs.
Just no Flash intros!
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I totally agree with this article.
I never learned flash, because I was too busy with the great printing era 1995-2002. Then flash beaten me. Everyone was doing it, and not really well.
I think that very well planned flash interfaces can be so groundbreaking, and I have seen things that made me speechless. However, that is not our average client, and in my studio we try not to go into flash, because its richness increases project cost and most of the time the AVERAGE client doesn’t valuate that.
Also, Adobe itself knows this. and prepared something amazing called the “Air Technology.” Let’s see how that goes.
@Felipe Martyn – Thanks for the response. Now that I’ve matured in design a bit (29 yrs old)… the real world allows you to build beautiful, usable websites that generate measurable results for clients WITHOUT FLASH.
The term that comes to my mind is “Overrated” whenever I see a Flash website these days. I’m more interested in websites that make me feel as though they are a pleasure to use.
Once again though… there is a place for challenging interfaces and Flash content and I hope the Flash gurus enjoy innovating within that space.
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Wholeheartedly agree – Flash has been dead to me for years, and I spend much time teaching my young designers to move away from it and embrace modern standards; I create better websites because of it!
Also don’t forget webkit animation http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/ coming soon to Firefox and other browsers, which allows you to animate transparent pngs, and anything else on the page. We’ve used this to dump flash internally for subtle things we don’t do with javascript.
This is a great article. I’ve been preaching this line of thought for years. Flash is a hindrance to most people, and it stifles creativity (even though it supposedly allows for “more” to be done) in the web domain.
I think most people would agree. Seeing the advances HTML + CSS + JS (not just jQuery) have made in the past few years – and are going to make in the future – have basically rendered Flash a dead duck for most applications.
The onus is now on web designers and developers to push standards compliance throughout the browsers we see and use.
If we can obsolete a technology like Flash this effectively, our next push should be to obsolete browsers (and the companies that produce them) that don’t perform as they’re supposed to.
This article may be more effectively titled “The Case Against Weblogs”…..
Seriously, if you could make a solid, concise and persuasive case for some type of action, then I’d be happy to forward it along to the people I work with, even point it out on Twitter for others to read.
I would _definitely_ urge you to keep your Internet software current.
jd/adobe
@John Dowdell
Thanks for your response. I love to learn and be corrected. Please feel free to be the voice in responding to my overall argument made in my article and the comments made by others.
I would agree with your statement on keeping Flash player software current because it has had security vulnerabilities this year!
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I still rather disagree, and not just because I have taken the time to keep up with Flash. Web technologies are getting there, but they’re not there yet.
In particular, heavily graphical content is very difficult to do without using Flash. The advent of the canvas tag, and (to a lesser extent) CSS3 Animations, point the way towards replacing Flash. But CSS3 animations are Webkit-only, and canvas is still not implemented in IE, and moreover, lots of people are still working with the staggeringly sluggish JavaScript engines in IE 6 and 7, which make animation a painful mess.
The work I do is interactive data graphics (for example, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/11/insurance_market.html). It’d be technically possible to do that using JavaScript, SVG or Canvas, the Raphael library, HTML, and CSS, but it’d be a nasty, bespoke mess that didn’t run in Internet Explorer (i.e. half the web). With Flash, the whole thing is packaged up into a tidy independent SWF, driven by a data file that non-programmers can edit and update without needing to bother me.
I’m optimistic that some day I’ll be able to replace that SWF with a similarly tidy JavaScript file, but the day is (sadly) years away–and every major browser release that doesn’t contain canvas and SVG support, doesn’t have a standard video format, etc. kicks it a little further down the road.
Very good case. I worked hard to learn AS2, then AS3, and then I don’t use it often enough to make I worth my time as a freelancer. Clients keep asking for Flash when I could do the job as well or sometimes better with HTML/CSS/JS. Certainly faster. How to educate them is a valid question, because at the end of the day I need the job…
@Evan
Thank you for adding perspective to the conversation. I totally support Flash gurus. The world needs you guys to develop QUALITY Flash content. My argument was more in line with @TheRegge (one post below). It’s simply not worth the effort for most developers to keep up with the Flash when you can better use that bandwidth to be more productive in other areas. It’s not a everyday tool but it requires constant tool sharpening.
What you designed there is perfect use-case for Flash.
@TheRegge
Thank you for your opinion. You basically summed up my entire attitude.
Great article. I want to say that Flash is best tool for interactive and information design solutions. The limits are imagination
Good post. I think my biggest take-away was right up at the top:
“While I still think Flash has its place, I’m not promoting it or recommending its usage to my clients if other more straight-forward and functional options exist.”
I think the majority of the time, Flash is not the appropriate solution. When it is, then by all means, run with it. But in my opinion, Flash has become an expensive, marginal, niche tool with limited application.
A
I’m at the point now where I’m spending my time searching the web for “Complaints against Flash”. I did this to see if I was the only frustrated designer who after designing several Flash sites with earlier versions of Flash, found it impossible to go further with any of the updates offered by Adobe! In one case, Adobe went backwards when they decided to return designer friendly features to an upgrade after removing them in an earlier version. I’m assuming complaints ran ramp-id! I’ve been forcing myself to TRY to learn actionscript but so far it hasn’t paid off. I still hold onto Flash 8 to do most of my work. What was once designer friendly is now “Designer enemy”. There is so much time spent learning the language that design time is neglected, hence projects are cancelled, downgraded or re-evaluated. Flash at one time was a unique solution for designers seeking to wow customers and easily create interactive marvels with a designers touch. No more. I could also raise an argument for letting other programs go by the wayside as well, GoLive is at the top. I’m disappointed that Flash is no longer as user friendly as it once was but at least I still have Photoshop and Illustrator which have maintained a usability throughout the years.
@Randy — I agree wholeheartedly. I was at a Google event last night and this guy was making apps in Flash because it was easier to be cross-browser compliant. I asked him what the trouble was and it turns out he’s too lazy or doesn’t know how to professionally program front-end web graphics. Flash allows him to be “snazzy” in a WYSIWYG way. However, his argument made little sense because he had a lot of trade-offs with using Flash as well. IMO, he would have been better off avoiding adding that extra Flash variable into his app mix.
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