Is Flash Still a Dirty Word?

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One thing I don’t understand is that how in 2009 people are still put off by the use of Flash.  Seemingly dozens of frameworks have popped up to do animation using anything but Flash and none of them as well suited to the task as Flash itself.  There’s no need to recount the gross evils perpetrated in the late-90′s and early 2000′s by over-zealous marketers using Flash so we can all understand where the disdain comes from.  But today I want to ask, why does it persist?

The 37Signals Blog, Signal vs. Noise, featured a post today about the new Backpack website.  In this article, the author expresses surprise that Jason, the head of 37Signals, was not opposed to using Flash on one of their websites:

It is funny looking back on suggesting Flash for the Backpack homepage. I was a bit embarrassed. Flash is such a dirty word especially when it comes to the audience reading this blog.

Also, in the comments, you find:

Wow. You guys are developing a pretty strong reality distorting field ! ;)

and

Why didn’t you just make the final product an animated GIF (instead of using Flash on the site)?

With Flash market penetration rivaling even Javascript, why is there this notion that Flash is inherently bad?  As a big proponent of Flex, I’ve written previously about the near-ubiquity of Flash player.  With Adobe taking Flash accessibility more seriously, and many resources availble for Flash SEO, it seems that most of the common objections are becoming obsolete. Perhaps the most compelling argument that Flash is truly mainstream is that (as of this writing) Alexa cites YouTube, a site whose primary content is served via Flash player, as the number 3 most visited website globally.

As someone who is a big fan of Adobe Flex and the possibilities it presents, I truly hope that this dislike of Flash disappears sooner rather than later.  

  • http://www.headweightdesign.com Todd Little

    Honestly, I believe it’s because in good Flash implementations, all you see is the product as a whole. For instance, when I visit YouTube, I don’t see a Flash video player, I see a video player that provides the functionality I need that fits its surroundings. However, when Flash is implemented poorly, to me, it’s glaring that Flash was used for the sake of using Flash. This still seems to be common in things like ads, and the early 2000′s holdout, the splash page.

  • http://blog.codeeg.com Calvin

    I don’t see YouTube as a good justification to use flash more, at least in the way you’re suggesting flash should be used. YT’s usage is purely utilitarian – they only use flash where absolutely required. Otherwise, it’s primarily HTML. The only practical way to leverage the animation and/or flex capabilities of flash is really to implement the whole site in Flash.

    I think one of the things that hurt flash is that site that are built entirely in flash feel distinctively different than other websites, and that is a major put off to users who are expecting a web-like experience.

  • http://briancrescimanno.com Brian

    @Calvin I think you misunderstand my Youtube reference–I only meant that the widespread use of YouTube illustrates the ubiquity of Flash. I concede the utilitarian use; however to say that Flash was “absolutely necessary” would be to ignore that even at the time of YouTube’s launch there were several competing video delivery systems for the web–not the least of which were offerings from Microsoft and Apple respectively. In this case, it might be a reasonable assumption that it was the ubiquity of the Flash player that made it the best choice (despite, at the time, having significantly lower quality video support).

    I agree completely with the notion that Flash not “feeling distinctively different than other websites” may have caused it trouble in the past. But with Today’s Web climate giving rise to more web applications than web sites and the rise of Javascript as a means to provide rich interaction, the differences in user “feel” will diminish.

    As far as sites built entirely in Flash, Google provides a great example of fairly seamless integration on their Google Finance site:

    http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL

  • http://blog.codeeg.com Calvin

    I think the rise of web applications has been happening long enough to say there is still something inherent in Flash itself that makes it feel different from web applications. It’s not rich interaction that’s creating the dissonance, it’s other subtle factors such as scrolling, context menus, and text rendering.

    As far as the Google Finance site, I see it as perfect example of the correct use of Flash, just like on YouTube. I guess I don’t fully understand what animation frameworks you’re talking about. I’m assuming you’re mainly talking about JS frameworks such as Scriptaculous, JQuery, and Mootools. I would categorize how Flash is used on Google Finance as more than an animation. They still use some sort of JS library to do simple animations (the scrolling list on the right, for example).

  • http://www.linkedin.com/in/neilgreen Neil

    10 years ago, there were a lot of compelling reasons not to utilize Flash on your website, much less do the entire User Interface in Flash. If you are a developer who has been developing websites over the last 10 years, these prejudices probably still exist. However, I believe the major issues have gone away:

    1999: The Flash Plugin is not ubiquitous
    2009: The Flash Plugin is ubiquitous

    1999: Flash movies take up too much computer resources to play
    2009: Computers are more than fast enough to handle Flash movies

    1999: Flash makes the website too slow to load
    2009: High speed internet connections have addressed this

    1999: Trying to develop in the Flash Authoring Environment was a nightmare
    2009: We now have Flex Builder, MXML, & ActionScript which make development a breeze

    1999: Flash applications tend to be designed with low usability
    2009: The Flash applications tend to be designed with high usability

    If you’re a developer who is still thinking like it’s 1999, then no amount of logic or reason is going to win you over. There are still Cobal and Ada developers today that make some of the same arguments heard against Flash against Java and Ruby. Sometimes you just have to let people have their prejudices and move on with your own vision of how the future will play out.

    Ultimately, I claim that unless you are utilizing Flash as your UI development platform, you cannot create RIA’s that have relevance over the next 10 years. We’re reaching the limit of what you can do with JavaScript, and are only scratching the surface of what we can do with Flash.

  • http://briancrescimanno.com Brian

    I don’t believe that there’s anything on the Google Finance site (the Flex piece included) that simply could not be implemented in Javascript using the libraries you mentioned (and likely some others). The difference is with Flex the development time is going to be significantly reduced and the quality of the final product significantly increased.

    With it’s market penetration numbers, Flash Player might actually be the most widely adopted platform for building user interfaces worldwide. Javascript and HTML might technically be considered to be ahead–but with varying support from browser vendors, no other interface platform is so universal.

  • http://www.pricebonus.com/ PB

    Honestly, I believe it’s because in good Flash implementations, all you see is the product as a whole. For instance, when I visit YouTube, I don’t see a Flash video player, I see a video player that provides the functionality I need that fits its surroundings. However, when Flash is implemented poorly, to me, it’s glaring that Flash was used for the sake of using Flash. This still seems to be common in things like ads, and the early 2000′s holdout, the splash page.