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Why Flash is Dying as a Website Platform |
| By Kevin Fleming | February 18, 2008 |
Note: This is an article I wrote about a year ago, however its even more apparent and true today. Since the website that this was published on is no longer up, I thought I would share it here.
I had an interesting discussion today with a group of designers who seem to believe that Flash is the medium of the future for websites. I thought this was an interesting topic, and decided to write a blog post about it because I completely disagree. In fact I strongly believe in most cases Flash is on its way out as a website platform, being utilized more for elements on a website such as streaming video or animated banner ads and being replaced by dynamic web applications that utilize PHP and Ajax.
As many of you know, I have a large design background and I even created Flash based websites (example) religiously for a few years, there was a time when I couldn’t imagine ever saying what I’m saying today. However If you look at the top 100 sites on the internet (According to Alexa), not one of them uses Flash as platform. Flash is now used for minor elements of media included on sites including streaming video, and animated advertisements.
People in the design world eat Flash sites up, because from a design aspect it can produce incredible results. With that said however, from a technical and business perspective, if a website is built with Flash incorrectly it can be a nightmare, and ultimately lead to the downfall of a site. As we all know, form follows function.
There are three main things that are ultimately going to lead to the demise of Flash for the use as a platform for most websites. Although I don’t think Flash is going anywhere as a medium for elements on a website such as streaming video and animated advertising, the amount of new Flash sites you see popping up on the internet these days is nowhere near what it was two or three years ago.
The main reason Flash is no longer favored as a main medium for websites is the emphasis on traffic from search engines. The content included within the Flash files simply can’t be spidered by Google, Yahoo, Live Search, or any other search engine for that matter. Search Engine traffic is usually the main source of traffic for any serious website, some websites receiving tens if not hundreds of thousands of visitors daily via search. Businesses trying to rank for popular terms relating to their area of expertise are realizing this and moving away from Flash back to traditional HTML and CSS based sites, or Flash / HTML hybrid sites at the most.
The second reason Flash is no longer favored as a main medium for websites is the limited amount of advertising you can have on a based Flash site. Current advertising platforms such as Google Adsense and Yahoo Publishers Network which generate BILLIONS of dollars a year in revenue do not support Flash and cannot be included in Flash files. Most of the large websites on the internet generate most, if not all of their revenue from advertising.
The third reason Flash is on its way out, for a website medium at least is recent developments in content rich web applications that use AJAX and PHP to dynamically provide updates on a website. There was a time, a few years back when all the hot new websites were Flash based and experimented with Flash technology to provide news, have instantly updating messages boards, etc.. Guess what? Every one of these sites failed. Obviously none of us talk on Flash based forums or get our news from blogs and news sites created in Flash anymore.
Web 2.0 sites like Digg.com, Facebook, and Blogs all are the rage now and unsurprisingly to me none of these use Flash. Digg.com is a great example of a dynamic site that uses these new backend technologies utilizing AJAX and PHP. As you can see when you “Digg” an article, the Digg count is updated in real time, something that just a few years ago was only thought possible in Flash.
The simple conclusion to all of this is that although some Flash sites look amazing from a design perspective, because of the limited search and advertising possibilities Flash sites do not directly generate revenue so most people and businesses alike are finding it impractical to make an entire website Flash based. Flash based websites will survive to some degree, and continue to be used for branding and corporate identity purposes as well as for design firms and such. Oh and yeah yeah yeah..Meebo is an exception=)
Note: I didn’t touch on the bandwidth aspect of Flash Based sites because in my mind, thats something that could be worked around eventually with the ever increasing speed of internet connections.
Filed under: Technology |
February 18, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
[…] design perspective, because of the limited search and advertising possibilities F… source: Why Flash is Dying as a Website Platform, FOS Commerce […]
February 18, 2008 @ 6:23 pm
Yes, flash is going on the way out as a mainstream platform for websites (exclusively). It’s just following the pattern of new multimedia technology from it’s induction to it’s delegated place as to it’s intended purpose.
I remember when Java was released and EVERY site just had to have the water reflection for images, the rollover buttons, etc but now it’s considered a big no-no to do so for such… simple things. Java has been delegated simply for multimedia content.
Same thing will happen to flash although flash provides something to advertisers that Java didn’t. Alternative to cookies and very quick load times. Just like the transparent tracking pixel, I don’t see the transparent tracking flash object disappearing for this specific purpose.
February 18, 2008 @ 6:46 pm
Why do you say meebo is an exception? They do not use any flash. It is all DHTML and AJAX…
It is an awesome site, btw.
February 18, 2008 @ 6:57 pm
At the time I wrote the article, I believe Meebo was in Flash, they may have transitioned over since then since everyone is moving away from it.
February 18, 2008 @ 7:28 pm
I’m a dedicated Flasher and as soon as I am released I’m going right back to doing it.
February 18, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
You’re a little late to the party. But only by 8 years, so don’t feel too bad.
It’s a shame you didn’t keep up with the technology and the ideology in 2000, when Jakob Neilson published “Flash 99% bad”. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html
February 18, 2008 @ 11:39 pm
Flash is cool. Cool does not pay the bills. Flash cost a lot of money to do a reasonable site, does not work with search bots, is a SEO nightmare, has a limited pool of talent available to maintain it, does not play well with web services, is not safe near a database, does not come with plug-ins, does not support extensions, thinks Ajax is a cleaning tool, is not an open source platform, cost to much money for the IDE, has a TERRIBLE syntax object language, does not support SSL layers, lacks decent debug tools, and frankly is used by ego driven geek artist, that can’t rub two pennies together to make a real buck on the web.
February 18, 2008 @ 11:42 pm
You missed a really obvious reason - Flash is massively difficult and painful to build. A Flash designer has to maintain a virtual encyclopedia of workarounds for all the modules that just. don’t. work, such as loaders and scrollbars. Things it should just be possible to take for granted, that take days of hacking instead.
February 19, 2008 @ 12:11 am
I agree with all of your points regarding Flash use in websites. But the bigger cause of its falloff in my opinion is Macromedia’s refusal to allow distribution of Flash any other way than by direct download from them. I write desktop software and I would LOVE to be able to include a Flash GUI. ActionScript makes it a breeze. Who WOULDN’T want a snazzy frontend.
Well, Microsoft saw the opportunity, and now if you’d like to do the same, you’ll have to do it with Silverlight according to their stipulations. Sigh.
February 19, 2008 @ 12:47 am
You miss the entire point of flash. Its a component to the presentation layer of a website. It should be used in moderation and as ‘polish’ to a complete package.
The days of ‘full flash’ sites are long gone. However Flash is going nowhere. Web 2.0 and Flash aren’t even near the same things. They share some of the same attributes - but then again a horse and an airplane share attributes but are still radically different.
We have clients every single day looking for 2 things (I work at a new media company as a software developer). They look for polish and they look for professionalism. Web 2.0 practices bring usability to applications and Flash brings that to design.
February 19, 2008 @ 4:09 am
Check out Adobe Flex. It lets you code in strongly typed ECMA Script 4 (aka JavaScript 2 aka ActionScript 3) with MXML templating system which is very similar to HTML except no browser inconsistancies. It all runs very well on any browser on any platform with ZERO code changes. Only system req is Flash Player 9. Finally, you can port your web app to a desktop app by using Adobe Air. Your Flex application will transport seamlessly to a desktop install with full integration with the native host operating system toolbar, system tray, and file system. Of course, Air is optional, you can always just deploy as a web app and leave it at that.
Seriously, Flex kicks the shit out of Silverlight.
February 28, 2008 @ 6:04 pm
I’ve always disliked flash, but for games and video there is nothing better or more accessible. try doing youtube without flash, it wouldn’t work!
March 3, 2008 @ 4:54 am
i think the main problem is that most often flash isn’t used to bring more value to the customer but to make the owner of the business feel good about his website. i recently had a client who wanted a new website and i couldn’t talk him out of flash. i told him a lot of his customers will surf to his site from their workplace and these computers often lack either the power or the plugins to view his content. he said if anyone is so narrow-minded to not have a flash plugin he doesn’t want this person to be one of his customers… talk about narrow minded, huh?
also the standard for operating websites is somehow set. if you want to make business with your website, don’t bring entirely new navigation concepts or worse, bring navigation that eats up lot of your customers time.
i think flash still has its place, for videos or advertising minisites. other than that - i hope its dead
March 5, 2008 @ 5:14 pm
to me a site is about content and user experience and creating a identity for a brand. Nothing can deliver content while creating unique experiences as well as flash. Just look at
the fwa to see the posiblities. flicker and myspace may be sights everyone goes to but that is only cause you can meet a girl or network your album
flash is not dying if anything its taken yalls jobs left and right.
March 6, 2008 @ 12:45 am
you are very right, flash has been over run by SEO issues and will never be a good choice for a Websites main focus. It WILL be a major part of any rich components.
Flash, however, kicks AJAX all over the field when it comes to RIA. RIA has not SEO requirement usually. Flex/Flash is by far the best RIA technology available today. It does have a FAR BETTER DEBUGGER then actionscript. Its code runs 10-100 times faster then any javascript VM.
Gee I can go ON AND ON about how AJAX is a joke compared to Flash/Flex for RIA.
BUT, this does not stop the fact that most web developers are HTML based. It is what they learned. And really, they are too lazy to learn another technology. This, in my opinion, is the biggest issue.
All flash developers I know LOVE IT.
All AJAX people I know. HATE ALL THE TESTING AND HOW ITS ALWAYS BREAKING BETWEEN BROWSERS.
And Flash IS very much based on open source.
Sure the IDE costs. ANY decent IDE costs. Flex is stupidly cheap now. Flash CS3 is a bit expensive but no more then Photoshop, who I know everyone here would be using.
James
March 7, 2008 @ 10:04 pm
Flash is by no means based on open source, because its source its not open! Linux users, like me, cant have a decent 64bit implementation of the flash plugin for our browsers and we have to use wrappers. AJAX works fine if made by a good coder and tested on a standards-compliant browser. I agree 100% with the author.