Adobe Flash: Alternative to W3 Standards Compliance
Adobe Flash is a great web design tool. One of the big benefits of Flash is the ability to produce content that works on any browser, as long as the user has the free Adobe Flash Player. It also allows for a great video streaming platform as well as much more functionality than HTML on its own can provide. As Google and other search engines begin to implement the ability to parse and read these Flash websites, what really are the disadvantages and advantages to them? Many designers pass up Flash for newer Javascript(usually in the form of AJAX) or PHP technologies, typically for the reason that Flash is largely not searchable by search engines. So let’s take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of Flash and see if it really is still a technology to avoid.
Advantages:
-Integration with XML. This allows an external document to be manipulated and Flash can pull text from that XML document. This allows for content to be changed quickly and efficiently, which in the past was a daunting task for a Flash based website. Now you do not have to be familiar with Adobe Flash to be able to change content, just a simple text editor can do the trick.
-Faster load times. With everyone moving to a broadband connection, many people have ignored the load times of websites they create. Flash has previously been notorious for “Loading” bars which creep along slowly, even on a relatively fast broadband connection. Adobe has made significant strides in updating Flash and making it able for individual sections of a site to load individually, dramatically increasing website load times.
-Guaranteed browser interoperability. One major exception to this unfortunately is the iPhone, which still does not have Flash support. However, on the computer it does not matter what browser or Operating System you use as long as you have the free Adobe Flash Player. This saves a huge amount of time for the designer as you do not have to check your site on every single browser on the market.
-Use of exotic fonts. Say you want to use a cool font that you know the vast majority of people don’t have. Since Flash stores all of the information within the Flash file, it is not necessary for the consumer to have the font you want to use.
Disadvantages:
-Cost. If you do not already own a Flash production software, they are fairly expensive to purchase, and it’s not like HTML where you can just use a simple text editor. This could be a significant drawback for an upcoming website designer.
-No support on mobile platforms. A wide variety of mobile platforms are becoming more and more common(such as the iPhone), and most of these platforms do not support Flash (Yet!). Missing out on visitors because you do not support a platform is a serious problem. However it is common practice to produce a separate mobile site anyway, so doing so in HTML would be a viable alternative. Still, people do not get to experience the site as you intended, so this is a serious disadvantage.
-Even though Google says they can search Flash sites, it typically doesn’t work. I would say this is still the biggest issue to Flash sites, although it is being worked on by Google and other search engines and could very well be done soon. I feel that Flash is definitely a viable way to produce a website, and with a little finagling can be just as effective as an HTML site.
Hopefully as the next few years go on we will see more work towards making these websites searchable, and I think that as there becomes more and more variety in the browser world being able to create a site which works in all browsers without any difficulty is significant. I do still hope that as more browsers come along we see more and more progress towards total standards compliance, but in the mean time Flash is certainly an excellent alternative.
What do you think? Is Flash worth investing in? Let us know in the comments.
Tags: Adobe Flash, Computers, Web Design
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Computers, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.