Why I don’t use Flash

July 5, 2006 By

Why don’t I use Flash for my Web sites? Here’s a good reason.

I have a brand new Windows Vista machine. Loaded Firefox on it. And visited PodShow (a podcasting competitor of PodTech’s).

This is what it looked like. Now, if a “normal” person (non geek) hit this site, what would they do? I’ll tell you what they’ll do. They’ll hit back and get out of there. Note the title tag. Be Patient? No, I click that little green back button and leave before I get hurt. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

Lesson: always have HTML first before you get to Flash content.

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  • wood berensky

    Way back in 1999, when people communicated on BBS listings (in text form) Before AOL?eartlink or Compuserve was a household name we thought of the effect of Advertising on performance of the Internet.
    As you can see below not much has changed:
    Why Block Ads?
    Increased Speed
    The following quote came across the Edupage clipping service recently:
    …Web surfers weary of enduring the “pulsating, candy-colored wave of advertising that has spread across the Internet,” increasingly are turning to ad-blocking to speed up their download times. “They are a symbol of people saying, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore,’” says Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the Nielsen-Norman Group. … Many online advertisers dismiss the trend toward ad-blocking, noting that when faster connections are available, consumers will not be so annoyed about being forced to download cumbersome advertisement files.
    (Los Angeles Times 2 Mar 99)
    Unfortunately, higher internet access speeds make the problem worse, not better. As access speeds grow, the size and complexity of ads grows with it. Current ads contain animation or executable material and may even be complete programs that contain crude games. The bloat in these ads keeps the download times for pages at the ragged edge of tolerability even as access speeds increase dramatically. At the same time, the textual content that the ads supposedly support stays roughly the same, so the percentage of bandwidth used for ads climbs sharply and will approach 99% in the not-too-distant future. Indeed, as the speed of your internet access goes up, ad blocking becomes increasingly more beneficial, not less.

    http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/spam/adblock.shtml

  • wood berensky

    Way back in 1999, when people communicated on BBS listings (in text form) Before AOL?eartlink or Compuserve was a household name we thought of the effect of Advertising on performance of the Internet.
    As you can see below not much has changed:
    Why Block Ads?
    Increased Speed
    The following quote came across the Edupage clipping service recently:
    …Web surfers weary of enduring the “pulsating, candy-colored wave of advertising that has spread across the Internet,” increasingly are turning to ad-blocking to speed up their download times. “They are a symbol of people saying, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore,’” says Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the Nielsen-Norman Group. … Many online advertisers dismiss the trend toward ad-blocking, noting that when faster connections are available, consumers will not be so annoyed about being forced to download cumbersome advertisement files.
    (Los Angeles Times 2 Mar 99)
    Unfortunately, higher internet access speeds make the problem worse, not better. As access speeds grow, the size and complexity of ads grows with it. Current ads contain animation or executable material and may even be complete programs that contain crude games. The bloat in these ads keeps the download times for pages at the ragged edge of tolerability even as access speeds increase dramatically. At the same time, the textual content that the ads supposedly support stays roughly the same, so the percentage of bandwidth used for ads climbs sharply and will approach 99% in the not-too-distant future. Indeed, as the speed of your internet access goes up, ad blocking becomes increasingly more beneficial, not less.

    http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/spam/adblock.shtml

  • http://websitedesignFX.com/ Ney

    Wow what an Assumption. If we wanted the PC to emulate Telivision why wouldn’t we just use a Television ?

    Most people with Television want a TIVO or DVR/PVR so they can CONTROL the PROGRAMMING & ELEIMINATE the Advertising. Well, I have seen and work in some technology that will come true in some years to come. It is true, the internet is going to be a just a portal/path to deliver and recive information. Open TV formats are coming and I know that some companies already start working on free-chape OS system… Tivo, etc, tec, is just old technology and cool new systems will come along. I don’t see people using the internet like most do in the near future… it is going to be portable and faster… Time for the new era of interactive motion graphics everywhere.

  • http://websitedesignFX.com Ney

    Wow what an Assumption. If we wanted the PC to emulate Telivision why wouldn’t we just use a Television ?

    Most people with Television want a TIVO or DVR/PVR so they can CONTROL the PROGRAMMING & ELEIMINATE the Advertising. Well, I have seen and work in some technology that will come true in some years to come. It is true, the internet is going to be a just a portal/path to deliver and recive information. Open TV formats are coming and I know that some companies already start working on free-chape OS system… Tivo, etc, tec, is just old technology and cool new systems will come along. I don’t see people using the internet like most do in the near future… it is going to be portable and faster… Time for the new era of interactive motion graphics everywhere.

  • http://blogs.katapultmedia.com/jb2 John C. Bland II

    “New Yahoo Message boards are causing 50% of people to leave their service in search of a new MB that is not threaded. Google Finance & Lycos Ragingbull.com are 2 examples of up and coming ones.

    Bye Bye Flash.. ”

    How stupid is that? Why “Bye Bye Flash..” and not Yahoo!? They are the one’s with the annoying ads right?

    So, if they switched to ads made entirely of animated gifs would you turn off images and say “Bye Bye GIFs!”? I highly doubt it.

    The worst part is that you pointed out using Google Finance. IT USES FLASH! Go here: http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=983582. Right click on the chart and what do you see? The Flash Player! Oh wait, you uninstalled it so I guess you don’t get all of the rich functionality Google created.

    Now, I’m not the one to flame people publicly but come on. Publicy ignorance deserves public bashing, right?

    This whole post, as others have said, is ridiculous. With all of the bad implementations of WMV, Real, QuickTime, etc out there, why is Flash being bashed? I mean seriously…I guess you like clicking on the Windows Media, Real, or QT logo for video sites. LOL.

    As Mike Chambers so eloquently pointed out (lol), what happens when you visit a page with a WMV and don’t have the “plugin” (player) installed? Well, for him (on a Mac) it did something different than what it would do for me. What does it do for me in Firefox on a PC?

    THE SAME DANG THING! Seriously, the same window shows window/bar shows for QT, Real, and Windows Media. Why is this? BECAUSE THEY ARE PLUGINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    LOL. Come on…let’s get real. Google Video and YouTube wouldn’t be nearly as successful using any other technology. If you think so, name one (just one!) site that is even close to being as big as they are for video and doesn’t use the Flash Player.

    1 more thing about the person who said, in my words, “Flash is bad since it can’t be searched.” What happens when the search engines get smart enough to search inside of swfs? Hrmmm…what will be your excuse for not using Flash then? It will have the same abilities as HTML plus TONS more. Just a thought. :-)

    I’ll stop there. I could go on all day and refute each and every negative statement on this site but I need to get off of this laptop. :-)

    Scoble, you definitely opened a can that seems you can’t provide educated or even remotely eloquent responses to any of the Flash facts folks gave above. You seemed to nicely avoid many of the facts. :-) Give us more than a badly done site as proof why you shouldn’t use Flash. Otherwise, turn off images (to remove animated gif’s), uninstall Windows Media Player/QT/Real (since a badly done site will show the same message), and don’t install WPF/E when it comes out. Then you’ll get nothing but text and you should be happy. ;-) Go 1985!

    (sorry for the flaming; ignorance/close minded people irritate me)

  • http://blogs.katapultmedia.com/jb2 John C. Bland II

    “New Yahoo Message boards are causing 50% of people to leave their service in search of a new MB that is not threaded. Google Finance & Lycos Ragingbull.com are 2 examples of up and coming ones.

    Bye Bye Flash.. ”

    How stupid is that? Why “Bye Bye Flash..” and not Yahoo!? They are the one’s with the annoying ads right?

    So, if they switched to ads made entirely of animated gifs would you turn off images and say “Bye Bye GIFs!”? I highly doubt it.

    The worst part is that you pointed out using Google Finance. IT USES FLASH! Go here: http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=983582. Right click on the chart and what do you see? The Flash Player! Oh wait, you uninstalled it so I guess you don’t get all of the rich functionality Google created.

    Now, I’m not the one to flame people publicly but come on. Publicy ignorance deserves public bashing, right?

    This whole post, as others have said, is ridiculous. With all of the bad implementations of WMV, Real, QuickTime, etc out there, why is Flash being bashed? I mean seriously…I guess you like clicking on the Windows Media, Real, or QT logo for video sites. LOL.

    As Mike Chambers so eloquently pointed out (lol), what happens when you visit a page with a WMV and don’t have the “plugin” (player) installed? Well, for him (on a Mac) it did something different than what it would do for me. What does it do for me in Firefox on a PC?

    THE SAME DANG THING! Seriously, the same window shows window/bar shows for QT, Real, and Windows Media. Why is this? BECAUSE THEY ARE PLUGINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    LOL. Come on…let’s get real. Google Video and YouTube wouldn’t be nearly as successful using any other technology. If you think so, name one (just one!) site that is even close to being as big as they are for video and doesn’t use the Flash Player.

    1 more thing about the person who said, in my words, “Flash is bad since it can’t be searched.” What happens when the search engines get smart enough to search inside of swfs? Hrmmm…what will be your excuse for not using Flash then? It will have the same abilities as HTML plus TONS more. Just a thought. :-)

    I’ll stop there. I could go on all day and refute each and every negative statement on this site but I need to get off of this laptop. :-)

    Scoble, you definitely opened a can that seems you can’t provide educated or even remotely eloquent responses to any of the Flash facts folks gave above. You seemed to nicely avoid many of the facts. :-) Give us more than a badly done site as proof why you shouldn’t use Flash. Otherwise, turn off images (to remove animated gif’s), uninstall Windows Media Player/QT/Real (since a badly done site will show the same message), and don’t install WPF/E when it comes out. Then you’ll get nothing but text and you should be happy. ;-) Go 1985!

    (sorry for the flaming; ignorance/close minded people irritate me)

  • http://www.websitedesignfx.com/ Ney

    Why Flash?
    Over 700 million Internet-connected desktops and mobile devices have flash installed. Flash content reaches 97.7% of Internet viewers. Flash is here to stay and it will get even more big.

  • http://www.websitedesignfx.com Ney

    Why Flash?
    Over 700 million Internet-connected desktops and mobile devices have flash installed. Flash content reaches 97.7% of Internet viewers. Flash is here to stay and it will get even more big.

  • http://www.curtismorley.com/ Curtis J. Morley

    I had a similar discussion the other day. You can find the article here http://www.curtismorley.com
    I list many sites that are successful using Flash and still make it on the search engines.

  • http://www.curtismorley.com Curtis J. Morley

    I had a similar discussion the other day. You can find the article here http://www.curtismorley.com
    I list many sites that are successful using Flash and still make it on the search engines.

  • Wood

    i DONT USE FLASH BECAUSE it INVITES ADVERTISING that
    i dont want to see. Since Adobe bought flash Advertising has EXPLODED into being written into ever crevice and webpage on Yahoo, Ebay, common sites. When using IE and I don’t have flash I get an error message.
    When using flash the pages load up SLOW for the Advertising content that is embedded and delays loading other content first. I HATE fricking FLASH. NO MORE ADVERTISING would render FLASH obsolete. Plus I don’t like distracting web pages. When Yahoo Finance change its message boards I UNINSTALLED FLASH PLAYER. Exactly 1/2 of my ANNONYING ADS disappeared. Now All I have to do is to figure out a way to get the Banner space and th yimg (yahoo ads) to disappear and I will have it made.

  • Wood

    i DONT USE FLASH BECAUSE it INVITES ADVERTISING that
    i dont want to see. Since Adobe bought flash Advertising has EXPLODED into being written into ever crevice and webpage on Yahoo, Ebay, common sites. When using IE and I don’t have flash I get an error message.
    When using flash the pages load up SLOW for the Advertising content that is embedded and delays loading other content first. I HATE fricking FLASH. NO MORE ADVERTISING would render FLASH obsolete. Plus I don’t like distracting web pages. When Yahoo Finance change its message boards I UNINSTALLED FLASH PLAYER. Exactly 1/2 of my ANNONYING ADS disappeared. Now All I have to do is to figure out a way to get the Banner space and th yimg (yahoo ads) to disappear and I will have it made.

  • Wood

    James Bailey- I like YOUR way of thinking. ~~~~~~~~~~

    As far as I can tell, 99% of all flash is advertisements. I don’t want to see flash advertisements. It is very easy to turn off Flash in Safari without any hacks or add ons. I just turn off plug-ins in the security preferences. The only plug-ins I want are Quicktime embeds and for those I have a simple AppleScript that turns plug-ins on and off from the AppleScript menu as needed.

    If you are a company that wants my business, it is unlikely that you will get it if your design requires flash. I simply don’t see it because it is almost always turned off.

  • Wood

    James Bailey- I like YOUR way of thinking. ~~~~~~~~~~

    As far as I can tell, 99% of all flash is advertisements. I don’t want to see flash advertisements. It is very easy to turn off Flash in Safari without any hacks or add ons. I just turn off plug-ins in the security preferences. The only plug-ins I want are Quicktime embeds and for those I have a simple AppleScript that turns plug-ins on and off from the AppleScript menu as needed.

    If you are a company that wants my business, it is unlikely that you will get it if your design requires flash. I simply don’t see it because it is almost always turned off.

  • http://allseo.wordpress.com/ Romuald

    Thank you the guys thank you Robert Scoble Favour has you I took away head and pub in Flash of my sites.
    I am in order concentrate on a html (xhtml) check and ca has given me fastness and one see information apparently. Greeting
    ps. Never more Flash in navigations.

  • http://allseo.wordpress.com/ Romuald

    Thank you the guys thank you Robert Scoble Favour has you I took away head and pub in Flash of my sites.
    I am in order concentrate on a html (xhtml) check and ca has given me fastness and one see information apparently. Greeting
    ps. Never more Flash in navigations.

  • http://timheuer.com/blog timheuer

    hey scoble, can you fix your scobleshow? http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2006/10/23/13783.aspx

  • http://timheuer.com/blog timheuer

    hey scoble, can you fix your scobleshow? http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2006/10/23/13783.aspx

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  • Gern Velblatt

    Actually, your average user will install the plugin without a second thought. You’ve been thinking like geeks, who might have enough knowledge to be reticent.

  • Gern Velblatt

    Actually, your average user will install the plugin without a second thought. You’ve been thinking like geeks, who might have enough knowledge to be reticent.

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