FLASH FORWARD

ADMIT IT. YOU'VE CLICKED AWAY FROM SOME TRULY HORRIFIC FLASH WEBSITES OVER THE YEARS.

JAMSHED AVARI, DEPUTY EDITOR

FLASH FORWARD

I’d love to see an Internet without Flash. Or at least without so much of it. No doubt about it, I’ve seen some truly awful Flash interfaces in my time. Worse than that, I’ve seen the stuff used where it’s absolutely and completely unnecessary, serving no purpose other than to show how amateurish the Web designer in question is. Back in the mid 90s, people thought that spinning balls and whizzing lines of text meant they were cutting edge. Entire Websites were built in Flash and were nearly always so annoying that offering a non-Flash option (with zero loss of functionality) was the norm. Most websites are now a lot more sophisticated than that, but we all still come across ugly Flash buttons, banners and intro screens way too often.

There are plenty of brilliant things one can do with Flash, including games, interactive infographics, video with inline comments and links. Today we have audio and webcam support, HD video and hardware graphics acceleration, powering diverse websites and applications from Rathergood.com to Chatroulette! These clever designs have made Web browsing a richer and more compelling experience—in fact without Flash we wouldn’t have gamechangers such as YouTube at all! These apps have introduced us to online innovations way faster than the Web at large has been able to evolve, which has been a good thing for everyone. For that very reason, Flash isn’t going to die out entirely anytime soon.

BACK IN THE 90S, PEOPLE THOUGHT THAT SPINNING BALLS AND WHIZZING TEXT WERE CUTTING EDGE

The problem is that designers can now take it for granted that their Flash tricks will be seen by one and all just as if it were an official Web standard. Adobe claims that nearly 99 percent of all Web surfers have the player plugin installed (with over 90 percent having the latest version) and it’s become so ingrained in our minds that we nearly always click on prompts to install Flash without even thinking about it.

We all need to remember that Flash isn’t a native Web standard. It’s generally bulky, buggy, and there are plenty of better ways to do things. A Flash banner doesn’t prove you know Web design, in fact it makes your site more difficult to update and redesign when the need arises. A huge number of developers, designers and educators alike now need to broaden their horizons and step out of the past.

Apple started the firestorm with its barbs and stubborn refusal to allow Flash onto its portable devices, but now every major browser developer has announced a newfound commitment to HTML5 and associated common standards for audio, video, animations, vector graphics and other effects. Apart from the ideological debates currently raging about open vs proprietary platforms and unfair business practices, the fact is that a level of momentum has been achieved in the industry to finally get HTML5 off the ground—after years and years of standing still. At the very least, we’re going to have solid alternatives to Flash for many of the situations in which it is currently used, and we won’t be at the mercy of a plugin with such a dubious security record.  

- jamshed.avari@chip.in