| Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a | | | | flash have very small fonts that are particularly hard |
| powerful multimedia technology that brings life and | | | | to read. Worse, there are no ways of resizing the |
| color to the web. Flash however, comes with various | | | | page text size used on such pages. The worst part is |
| disadvantages that often hinder its implementation in | | | | that flash sites have no accessiblity features for |
| web page design. At a time when SEO is a necessity | | | | visitors who use text-only browsers or those who |
| in web design, flash should be used very cautiously. | | | | are visually handicapped. |
| Following are some reasons why: | | | | 4. Distracting animations and eye-candy |
| 1. Browser incompatibility | | | | Many overzealous designers often go over |
| While it's true the Adobe Flash plugin has been | | | | themselves to come up with extremely busy web |
| installed in very many browsers, you often need the | | | | pages full of flashy graphics, animated banners and |
| latest version of the plugin to view content created | | | | other multimedia flash elements. With Flash, it's very |
| using new versions of flash authoring software. You | | | | easy to yield to the temptation of creating web |
| are also not sure that every user updates their | | | | pages full of eye candy that fails to delight the eye |
| plugins diligently. This presents the risk of your flash | | | | but ends up distracting thge mind. Be careful, most |
| content not being properly viewed by all your site | | | | modern browsers e.g. Opera offers users the option |
| visitors. Woe unto you if your entire site is in flash. | | | | of instantly disabling animated graphics and other |
| 2. Near-impossible site indexing | | | | multimedia content. |
| Site engine robots cannot execute JavaScript nor | | | | 5. Slow-loading mutimedia content |
| index content that is embed within flash files. For that | | | | It is true that most Flash content is handled as |
| reason, flash site designers are encouraged to | | | | vector graphics in flash authoring applications. On the |
| provide html or text only versions of their web | | | | web however, these files are incorporated as SWF |
| pages. This should however be carefully implemented | | | | flash files. In view of the ActionScript that facilitates |
| to avoid penalties of web page duplication and | | | | animations and interaction, the file sizes increase. |
| spamming search engine robots. | | | | Ultimately, web sites with heavy flash content take |
| 3. Very small screen fonts | | | | longer to load. This can easily drive your visitors |
| For some reason, many web sites designed entirely in | | | | away. Flash content is to be kept to a minimum. |