Websites and Flash
As I was working on a redesign for Paradygma—among other things, I want to make it more of a portfolio, not a showcase for every tiny bit of an illustration I’ve done—I realized that I’m really not fond of Flash. Not fond at all.
Every graphic-designer, illustrator and their dog seems to have this liking to creating their webpages in Flash. Alright, it’s pretty. The first thirty seconds. After this, I grow tired of not being able to open links into a new tab/window, of having to cope with intros and images displaying square by square or line by line only, in other words: all the bling-bling. I’m not really for the tacky stuff, and my, some of these are tackier than the deco of all of our five local Chinese restaurants put together.
I’m not sure of why I tend to dislike sites that make a heavy use of Flash. While I admire the power such an animation tool can give, while I like how its results are so much lighter than the traditional animated GIFs of old, while it provides a way of making useful tutorials, I still cringe at the sight of a site entirely done in Flash. Perhaps I’d better go around designing classical sites, with good old tables and stylesheets, and not attempt to meddle with that. Perhaps I’m not as creative and “inspired” as I think I am. Perhaps, all that simply, I aim for the practical things, and not for the pretty-but-unconvenient ones. Not to mention that Flash + SEO = not a good combination. What’s the point of having a nice website if search engines’ spiders can’t crawl it properly?
Of course, if one day I have to conceive a site in Flash, I’ll do it. I still won’t like it, nor will necessarily agree. But I’ll do it.
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Comments
Chris Howard
An excellent point with SEO, a major disadvantage.What about Laszlo, a rich Internet app platform where source files are compiled into Flash?Take a look at some of the demos. Cool stuff.http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/
Deborah
“What’s the point of having a nice website if search engines’ spiders can’t crawl it properly?”Good point. I have another one. What is the point of having a website if it takes the average person up to a minute (using dialup) to wait for Flash to load? As a former dialup customer, I’d leave these sites right away because they inevitably caused my computer to get hung up. I will stay if the site has a “skip the intro” feature on it.
Jennifer
I’m trying to learn Flash. I want ONE small thing to be an animation. 🙂 Just one thing on the home page. And it won’t affect anything (at least I don’t think it will) Now if only I could learn Flash.Though I agree with your points. And I HATE web pages that take forever to load. I guess I think Flash has it’s moments, and is good for particular/certain uses…
Yzabel
Chris, I’m going to have a look at Laszlo, thanks for the link. I didn’t know this, so I guess I’m up for having to completely discover it.
Yzabel
Deborah – I never was on dialup nor did I load such sites on other connections than mine, so I can’t compare, but that’s a valid point as well. Images can already be a pain, but sometimes I wonder if these animations are also conceived “the right way”. After all, I can take the same JPEG and make it uber-heavy or light and optimized for the Web. I guess a badly-conceived Flash page can be just as much of a hassle.
Yzabel
Jennifer – Exactly. Using Flash just for the sake of using Flash, or to obey a hype, is a little stupid. Just like many applications around, it’s indeed good for some things, and not for others… and not everyone seems to understand when and where to stop, I must say.