Is Flash Still a Dirty Word?
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.
