Flash movies on websites

Stuart · 03-11-2004, 11:32

Blue Raja's post here and particularly the link it contains prompted a question in my mind.

What do you people think? Do too many websites rely on Flash?

I personally think too many sites do. The article linked to by Blue Raja's post points out that although the BBC's coverage (and use of Flash) is very good, most of the other news sites could have created their pages using pure DHTML (or HTML in some cases) which would have made the site accesable to many more people.

As far as I am concenerd, sites can use Flash by all means. But, they should (where possible) provide a non-flash version of the site with the same content.

I think this partly because not all people want Flash Player installed on their PC (or other browsing device), partly because Flash is not available on all platforms (for instance, my P800 doesn't support flash movies), but mostly because, despite improvements in the new version, Flash still doesn't support disabled web users very well. Blind users, for instance, may rely on Screen readers to describe what's on screen. Previous versions of Flash didn't support any screen readers, and even now, Flash only supports one or two.

Also, one thing worth noting. For anyone designing commercial websites, I think the Disability Discrimination Act applies to commercial websites as well, so if you don't provide a non-flash site, you could be breaking the law.

zovat · 03-11-2004, 11:43

There is a lot of flash, and it can be annoying - especially if the whole page is in flash, and you want to copy a number or a link off of it into another window.

As long as there is a "skip flash intro" and/or a "non flash" option, then that is fine...

If there is no oprion but to use flash, then it can be very frustrating....

Plonking · 03-11-2004, 11:44

I read the link too, and agreed with it!

There seems to be a philosophy amongst 'arty' web designers who think that having a site that looks 'pretty' and uses a lot of flash is a good trade-off against being impossible to navigate, or just being plain rubbish!

This site is pretty funny : Web Pages That Suck , as is their mockery flash site here !

P

03-11-2004, 18:16

IMO Flash is a classic example of appearance over function.

Fine, so you can do lots of "flashy"(!) graphics and spinning text and bits and pieces whizzing all over the place, but can you actually *use* the damn thing??

Can you open a link in a new window? Hell no.

Can you browse it with text only? Very probably not.

Can you browse it if you don't have a high speed broadband connection? Sure, if you want to wait ten minutes for a page...

Flash does have its uses, but to write the main site in it is just stupid.

Stuart · 03-11-2004, 19:32

Sure, Flash does have it's uses. For instance, at work, we have bough Flash Communications Server (a server which enables Flash Player to carry live video/audio streams). We are currently using flash to provide a Video Conferencing system with whiteboard. I know there are other products that can do this, but the advantage of Flash is that it doesn't require the viewer to have any other software apart from Flash Player (which is probably on their system anyway).

Admittedly the people we communicate with generally have some sort of high capacity link to the net.

I do think, however, that if somebody designs a site using Flash (or using any kind of plug in) they should provide a "lite" version of the site with some text, and maybe some Jpegs.

When I did my degree, we had a unit teaching "Human Computer Interaction" (basically interface design). The one thing they kept drumming in to us is to keep interfaces simple and uncluttered. If people see a cluttered interface, they are more likely to just give up..

The same (IMO) applies to websites (after all, they have what could be called a User Interface).

punky · 03-11-2004, 19:49

It gets on my nerves, when the whole site's navigation and content is entirely flash. I don't mind flash intros if I can skip them.

That said though, Flash has been a huge blessing on the internet. Video, games, so much worthwhile content we get through it that beforehand was really difficult and costly/slow to develop. And it is completely cross browser, and platform.

Tezcatlipoca · 03-11-2004, 23:07

I really don't like flash-based sites.

Flash intros....OK...if you can skip them.