Flash is dead! Long live Flash!
Posted by Phil Renaud on February 22nd, 2006.
Phil Renaud has posted 21 articles.
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Web standardists: I love you guys. I really do. As far as internet users go, web standards advocates will back their bench like nobody else.
It’s part of the reason web standards have come such a long way in such a short time. Of course, there are a bunch more reasons, but that’s a primary one.
Know what else is a primary reason standardists have come together? The banishment of flash User Interface sites. The emerging web at the turn of the century was something pretty scary if you’re a fan of accessibility, and verily, web usability as a whole. But, we’re over that now, right? Lengthy flash intros by the wayside, user interfaces no longer with the same techno song pounding in the background and a series of beeps that’d make you swear Hal 9000 was living in your PC?
Weren’t those the old days? Hasn’t web2.0 saved us from the damnation that was unusable and one-shot websites?
Maybe not. Because it seems every time I turn around, there’s a new variety of the old problem. Right now, I think that the next big usability and accessibility problem on the web could be the rampant use of AJAX.
And it’s not like it’s the first time this has been preached, but really give it some thought: Is it worth it, having your browser’s back-button broken every time you click an AJAX’d link? Do you really want to delve forth into this brave (not so) new world of animation and client-server interaction that hasn’t been possible to quite this extent since…
…flash?
Because it certainly seems as though that’s what we’re moving towards. A whole new bubble to burst, with the “form over function” guideline tossed to the curb. Web designers all of a sudden are foaming at the mouth over the prospect of a new kind of design scheme that isn’t made by Macromedia.
And web-standardists, this is why I say I love you: because I know you won’t let me down here.
Don’t forget why you turned to standards-based design in the first place, why you dropped your favourite Flash resource from your bookmarks and started reading Zeldman.
Don’t let AJAX become the new Flash. Use it responsibly - follow the W3C and don’t alienate your average-joe web user - and we can all live to see another day, free from fear that we’ll wake up and the web will be repopulated with in-your-face splash-page intros with technotronic playing in the background.
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20 Responses to Flash is dead! Long live Flash!
Here here. Moreover, let’s start re-employing that old phrase “user-centered design.” AJAX and Flash might be great for showing off what a designer or programmer can do, but the web is ultimately about letting people get done what they want to get done. It doesn’t mean you can’t use things like Flash–certain applications of it can be really lovely. But standardists have gotten a lot of mileage out of that user-centered design sentiment–and for good reason.
It’ll never happen - designers with no web knowledge are born every day and as long as it moves they will like it, use it and think they know how to do it. I do think the future will be in animation based production - think what would happen if flash could be read by a google bot…
AJAX and Flash might be great for showing off what a designer or programmer can do
Are you sure you know what AJAX actually does? There’s so much more to it than showing off what a programmer can do! One major problem with web based applications is that they are stateless; AJAX brings us one step closer towards getting around this problem and making web apps as functional and efficient as desktop applications. I’m all for accessibility but the benefits of AJAX to a programmer are huge and far outweigh the possible misinterpretation of the back button. Provided it’s used sensibly and doesn’t make the user think they’ve gone anywhere, I don’t think that this would be a problem anyway. I agree with some of what you’re saying, both AJAX and Flash can be used badly at the expense of accessibility and standards but they can also be used very well and set a site apart from all the rest.
Hi,
Flash is not dead, I think your view of flash is stuck in the late 90`s. When used appropriately flash can be great.
http://blog.jensfranke.com/2006/02/11/orange-project-%E2%80%93-the-technical-view/
It pains me we people like you seem hell bent on divided web developers into two camps, flash vs. css/ajax.
Why not treat us as professionals, we are able to learn more than one set of skills and decided when it is appropriate to use css/ajax and when it is appropriate to use Flash and maybe (you might find this hard to believe) when it right to use both at the same time!
I think that Flash could be useful in the future once it eveolves to be more friendly towards standardistas. I hate the current divide and DD has a good philosophy of playing nice.
Getting back to the article, I don’t think that Phil is saying that Flash and Ajax should just go away and die, but he’d rather the designer would appreciate the user experience a bit more. A ‘meet in the middle’ approach. After all, we’ve (standards folks) started using flash in SIFR . I’d like to see the ‘factions’ coming together and using the benefits of both styles of design. We can’t say that Flash/AJAX is evil because it’s down to the designer as to how s/he uses it. A little AJAX might not harm accessibility and may improve usability. It could also ruin the experience entirely. Flash could be used to convey a technical issue a lot better than text or imagery.
Think of the problem, try to use the best technology to solve the problem and then make your final product avaialable (and usable) to as many people as possible.
Like Andrew said, AJAX can in fact improve usability. I think it should be used for intra-document interactions, and regular page loads for inter-documents navigation. Using AJAX for minor updates in a page is fine as long as there’s no big context change and as long as the user can clearly see there’s been no full page reload.
Take lightbox. Would you want to click the back button to hide the overlay ? No. If you press the back button you want it to go to the previous page. Using page reloads for overlays would confuse users. We in fact can restore good usability in some situations using AJAX.
I too think it’s a matter of choosing the right technology to solve the right problem. It finally boils down to the golden rule of all technology use: use it for a reason. If you don’t have a reason, just don’t use it.
I 100% agree. Flash is the animated gif of the new century. Its dead and should be molded into a powerpoint killer. It could be built into an awesome presentation package. Just my thoughts.
Why hate Flash or Ajax? Once again, while everyone says this sucks or that’s dead, no one takes the view of ‘Using a well thought out plan, what is the appropriate tool for a particular job?’.
I am a web standards evangelist who is also a Flash dev (yes, that’s possible) but I am also the first person to question ‘Is Flash appropriate for this project and why is it better?’. Most ‘AJAX’ apps I’ve seen aren’t even really AJAX in the first place. Just DHTML that, had it been written better, could have been contained on one page and no ‘remote scripting’ would have been needed at all.
Yes there are a ton of crappy Flash sites(omg are there a ton of unusable crappy Flash sites), but there are also a ton of crappy HTML sites too. There will always be. The close mindedness of what Flash is capable of that I’m reading here looks like it was copied form Slashdot 5 years ago. Flash is a powerful tool and it’s not going away but neither is AJAX. Why not learn both? I have.
Brandon,
To reitterate, I think Phil is saying that you can actually have Flash and AJAX and it can be usable and comply to standards.
Due thought and attention should be used when using these technologies though.
Crap can come in the form of pure HTML, or Flash, or using AJAX. It’s all about the designer/developer and has little to do with the tools.
wedge between flash devs, and standadistas, i must have missed that one, which camp do I fall under ;) hahahaha i have to admit i started out as a flash junky making full on flash sites, but sincecoming into the standards camp i pitch my tent with fellows like DD, I still like flash, but in small doses. i think ajax will go that way also.
remember in artclass when you first opened photoshop, what did the instructor always say ( at least any worth their salt)…
“open a new doc and press every button use every filter. Once you get that out of your system, then we’ll start to learn how to design.”
I think thats whats still going on in flash thought i do it calming down and i think for the next couple years we will see that in the use of Ajax. just give a few years guys might seem long but in terms of the programs lifetimes its still in its infancy and we just have not finished ” pressing all the buttons”
I agree alot with Andrews comments above. There is a place for both in the future of the web. I would however, like to see Flash become much more accessible, and at the very least validate to W3C standards when added to a page. I also don’t think that flash and AJAX are as mutually exclusive of each other as some people on both sides of the debate would have us believe. What about using AJAX to manipulate vector based/Flash art/animations?
[…] There’s an article over at Fadtastic that brings up the point that Ajax could become the new flash, a nonaccessible hassle (over) used by everyone for everything. He’s got a point… […]
Overall I guess people agree that you should never let design get in the way of what people want to do.
(By the way a good example of a site that uses a bit of unobtrusive Flash is http://kiva.org)
What’s interesting is that no one at all is claiming that poorly functional web design can still be beautiful. There are beautiful, but nearly unplayable, pieces of music. There are beautiful paintings that are totally abstract and would never match your living room decor. There are plenty of beautiful but completely uncomfortable beds, chairs, and sofas. But I’ve never met anyone who’s said a website is frustrating, confusing, unstable–and lovely enough to be visited again.
In other words, I think we all agree that the goal is web design that doesn’t limit functionality, that doesn’t limit creativity, that doesn’t limit funcionality, and so on. There are different tools—AJAX, DHTML, usage of strong style sheets—that can work towards that goal. But very little is going to be absolute in an environment as fluid as web design—very little except what works for the user.
“I would however, like to see Flash become much more accessible, and at the very least validate to W3C standards when added to a page.”
Plugins don’t care what tags invoke them… that’s up to the browser. EMBED was introduced in Netscape 2, and Microsoft later introduced OBJECT a bit later in IE3… a number of *years* after that the W3C said “don’t use EMBED” but didn’t suggest how the world’s browsers might migrate to that edict. That’s why you see functional plugin invocation not pass muster with spec validators, because the spec didn’t first validate itself to reality.
Plugins don’t care about OBJECT or EMBED… it’s the browsers which read those HTML tags.
(It took me awhile to realize that I had to open this page to full-screen size in order to see the comment field.)
“Crap can come in the form of pure HTML, or Flash, or using AJAX. It’s all about the designer/developer and has little to do with the tools.”
-QFE…I totally agree.
Ajax is a standard, its not some dark protocol developed over the years… on the other hand, flash is the non-standard one
Room decors should be made from organic materials not synthetic ones as much as possible.-,:
room decors in our home are usually coming from China and Thailand, we like to have some asian decors on our home.,;`
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