Macopinion

Top Ten Reasons Why Flash Sucks

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

Flash used to be an anomaly, an occasional technology used when traditional HTML just wasn't enough. But lately I've been running into more and more websites that use Flash indiscriminately, often for things -- like plain old text -- that don't require animation. This is frustrating and stupid.

While it's true HTML isn't all-powerful and technology like Flash can be useful if used judiciously, HTML is much more universal. Flash should only be used when absolutely necessary. And of course it should always be an option, not the only way to view a website.

This got me thinking about why I find Flash so annoying and frustrating. The following are my top ten reasons for why Flash sucks. Agree? Disagree? That's what Comments are for!

10: Extra bandwidth

While bandwidth isn't as big a deal today as it was a few years go, and Flash is designed to be efficient, it still often uses more bandwidth than a non-Flash site. This is just a waste.

9: "Loading" screens

The most annoying thing about modern video games is the stupid "Loading..." screen between levels. All this technology and we can't avoid such stupid delays? Lame lame lame! That's one of the reasons I prefer simpler, non-3D games. And now many Flash sites are so complicated they have their own "loading" screens. You go to a website and are greeting by a progress bar. Arrghh! We're going backward, not forward. Bottom line: if your website is so complicated it has to have a loading screen, you must redesign it.

8: Flash overrides "no popup window" preference

The only thing I hate more than popup windows are sites that resize my web browser window. I'm extremely particular about such things. I love that modern browsers have "no popup window" preferences, but how annoying is it that Flash sites can override that? Web designers that do that ought to be sent to Antarctica.

7: Flash dies and forces browser relaunch

I don't know if this is Mac-specific, but many times I've run into a situation where Flash suddenly stops working in my browser. The only cure seems to be to quit and relaunch the browser. This is unacceptable to me. On any given day I probably have ten or twenty web pages open (in tabs). These are sites I need for research for various projects I'm working on and losing access to them is more than annoying: it costs me time and hassle. Even if I save the URLs and restore them on browser relaunch (or use Firefox, which can restore them automatically), it still a waste of time.

6: Without Flash you can't access site

This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Though I loathe Flash, sometimes I'm stuck with it. Recently I needed to research a plugin for Adobe InDesign and was horrified to find that Adobe's Exchange website is Flash-based. I was stuck trying to work with their cruddy Flash interface. (It is that horrible experience which prompted this article, actually.)

5: Non-standard interface

Flash sites often recreate standard user interface controls, such as checkboxes and scrollbars. These usually are incredibly gaudy and ugly (sometimes they are designed specific to fit with the "theme" of a site), don't match any existing Mac controls (confusing), and don't work right. For instance, I was scrolling some text in a box on a Flash site one time and I noticed that the "thumb" (or "elevator") of the scrollbar was at the bar's midpoint even though I was at the end of the text I was scrolling. Curious, I kept scrolling and the thumb reached the end when the last line of the text was at the top of the text display. That's not the way a scrollbar is supposed to work -- the thumb should be at the bottom when the last bit of content is visible, not when it's at the top Non-standard controls are confusing and frustrating and should be outlawed.

4: Inconsistent interface

The whole point of a GUI (Graphical User Interface) is to provide a consistent, system-wide way of doing things. That enables the user. Learn something once and you can use that same knowledge in other places. But that's all lost with Flash, since different sites do whatever they want with no rhyme or reason. Similar controls look different and controls that look similar don't work the same way: it's bewildering.

3: Breaks web standards (i.e. command-click for new window, can't copy text, back/forward buttons, can't save photo)

I'm big on shortcuts and every day I use browser tricks that have been standard for over a decade. For instance, Option-clicking on a link saves the link to a file (instead of opening it within the browser) and Command-clicking on a link opens it in a new window (instead of replacing the window's current contents). I use both of those a dozen times a day. But with Flash, such standards break: you cannot force a linked PDF to download or open a link in a new tab or window. If there's an image you want to grab, you can't just drag it to your hard drive or Control-click on it for a "Save Image" option (I do a screen capture instead). Even ordinary text can't be selected and copied the way it can on an HTML web page!

2: Can't Bookmark page

A Flash site's links are not regular HTML, thus your browser can't track where you are within the site. There's not only no way to bookmark a particular sub-page within the Flash site, but you can't even step backward and forward within your navigating history! For some Flash sites that might not be that bad, but I've seen technical support sites for companies done in Flash. That is so wrong it's criminal: now no one else can link to the solution to a problem and you can't even bookmark a reference page or quickly return to a search page. Support sites are supposed to make information easier to find, not more difficult!

1: No user benefit

The number one reason why Flash sucks? There's no user benefit. What's the point of Flash? It merely adds colorful animation and fancy features. How do such things help the user? Though there are exceptions, most of the time they are merely flash and have zero user benefit. For instance, two types of sites that seem obsessed with Flash are movie sites and car sites. What do these sites do with Flash? They bury you with fancy animations, music, and other assaults, and make it more difficult (if not impossible) to find useful information. If you're wanting TV show style entertainment I suppose such sites would be okay, but when I was shopping for a new car a while back I found it totally frustrating trying to find basic details like a vehicle's gas mileage. Trying to compare the details of multiple vehicles (even from the same maker) was nearly impossible. For movie sites, I'm generally wanting to read bios of the director or cast, but such things are so difficult to access on Flash sites I rarely bother and stick with Internet Movie Database instead.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course. There are many other problems with Flash, but these are the most grievous. I can find a few things I like about Flash -- Flash videos like on YouTube are convenient (as long as the rest of the site isn't Flash) -- but most of the time when I see Flash used I don't think it was needed.

But weigh in with your own opinions. Do you like Flash? Hate it? Have no preference? Post your comments below!

macopinion@designwrite.com