xiik

Flash is an awesome technology.  We at xiik use it all the time, in fact.  You’ll notice that about half of our sites have a Flash element somewhere.  Flash components, integrated into a webpage, are great for displaying several pictures in a rotation, showing video or playing audio.  That doesn’t give you a lisence to use it for your whole site.

There was a period of time when Flash first came out that everybody jumped on the bandwagon and decided to (over)use it.  Similar to how frames and blinking text could be found on every site built in 1998, Flash was huge soon thereafter.  Then came the sudden slowdown as people realized incompatability issues – your users had to download a Flash Player to display Flash on your site – and that the load times were really bad for dialup users.  Unfortunately, this only slowed the overabundance of Flash sites briefly, as the newest versions of each browser came with Flash pre-installed and cable modems/DSL became more prevalent.

Fast-forward 8-10 years.  Now Flash is everywhere, again.  The trendiest places, especially restaurants, bars and music venues want to go all-Flash because things move and there are pictures and it’s interactive and it’s just…”wow”.  Somewhere along the way web designers united in giving up function for form.

What’s wrong with Flash sites?  Well, picture yourself at a social event (as I was last Thursday) at 10pm, trying to decide if you are going to walk 3 blocks down the street in negative temperatures to grab food at the hot new restaurant, Forty-Five Degrees.  Unfortunately, you can’t remember if they stop serving at 10 or 11pm.  Never fear – you pull out your trusty iPhone, type in the URL (http://www.fortyfiveindy.com).  To your surprise, you don’t pull up a hot and trendy website but, instead, receive dreaded blue box, indicating that the site is in Flash and cannot be viewed on mobile devices.  The owner of this establishment would not be delighted to know that he has now paid a lot for a site that has not reached his prospective customer – whom I’m sure would think it was lovely if they could actually see it – but, instead, has annoyed said customer to the point of PG-13 language.

Besides being completely unusable on most mobile devices, many find the sites annoying even on PCs.  Most users want to go to a site, find what they are looking for and move on.  This becomes difficult when they have to watch the site animate into a pretty picture, as I did this afternoon while waiting for http://www.scholarsinn.com/ to draw itself, wondering why they decided it was okay to waste my time.  Not to mention the near heart-attack it gave me when the music started playing (but we’ll save that for another blog).

Flash can still be used for portfolio sites, sites for kids or sites that should be interactive.  But if you’re trying to give people information like, say, your hours of operations, DON’T USE FLASH!  Already got a Flash site?  Simple fix – add your phone number, address and hours of operation to the bottom of every page of your website in HTML.  That way, even if they can’t see the pretty site you built for them, you at least won’t lose the customer.

And while the soapbox is still planted firmly beneath my feet, I’d also like to say that Flash intros are a HUGE no-no.  Nobody has the time or desire to wait for an intro to play.  In fact, every client we’ve worked with who requested it admitted that they always click the “Skip” button.  Don’t waste your money.  Spend it on things that the customer will appreciate and use.

Got questions?  Give us a call – 888.900.XIIK or visit us online at http://www.xiik.com

UPDATE:  Since the initial posting, 45 Degrees has changed their website from full-Flash to a hybrid (HTML with a really cool Flash component).  I doubt that this blog posting had anything to do with that, nor do I know what the reasons were behind the change.  However, I wanted to make sure that was clear that I was referring to their old site.  Not the new one.