Flash or Trash by timrendle.com

[timrendle]

Dear readers,
I have been reading so many articles relating to the pros/cons of Flash that I feel the need to throw in my two pennies. If you agree/dissagree with what I'm saying then feel free to reply.

Flash is an amazing visual tool that can be used to lift and enrich a static website. With the right actionscript Flash can create incredible visual experiences at incredibly low and fast loading file sizes.
It can also be used in many other ways to give functionality and security features to your sites that would not be possible with HTML.

Flash isn't good at is being recognised and scanned by search engines and I doubt it ever will be because of it's nature. Within Flash your text content is invisable to search engines. Therefore it stands to reason that Flash shouldn't be used to build an entire site.

Flash has it's pro's and con's but it should never be refered to as Trash, it is just a powerful tool that used in the right hands can help build beautiful experiences, but not on it's own, although it is powerful it is weak and if you want a successful site then put your content in HTML and your graphics in flash. You can get more than one flash animation on a page!

Peace.

[Dcrux]

I think there is a more interesting issue.

Flash, of course, is neither inherently good nor evil. Neither is Flash “just a tool.” All tools have built-in biases. Flash’s programming makes it effective for some applications and ineffective for others. As Doug Peterson notes, “When technology is used to support a task for which it is not well suited, failure is likely.” In the past, the focus has often been on the technology, with limited consideration given to other factors such as the site’s intended audience, or the company’s goals. The thinking went something like this: “Start with Flash, then adjust the Web content to fit the Flash application as needed.” More often than not, poor Flash design resulted from this “cart-before-the-horse” strategy.
-- Flashes of Brilliance and Use-Centered Design

Some want to blame the horse, others the cart. Few, if any, the underlying assumptions of the horse drawn cart. So the situation never changes because components of the system dynamics are taken out of their context.

When a large enough percentage of Flash designers want to pioneer usable new information and interaction design, that will happen. If not, then it will not happen. Pro and Con have one thing wrong by concentrating on Flash. Sites are good, bad, use centered, static or interactive first -- as these attrubutes describe content.

Standard HTML has no great claim on use centered design -- and that includes usability. Highly animated and interactive sites have a powerful argument to make. But only if they are forward looking, pioneering great new interaction designs. Not cool. Not narrowed down to the singular dimension of artistic expression.

In other words when sites like Hellocode get pointed to in equal measure with 2advanced, you'll see criticism evaporate. When links to El Pais gets passed around as much as the latest cool graphic effect, discussion of Pro and Con will be few and far between. And when "interesting" takes its place with "cool," few indeed will find a reason for starting threads like this.

[mtheory]

Originally Posted by timrendle

Flash isn't good at is being recognised and scanned by search engines and I doubt it ever will be because of it's nature. Within Flash your text content is invisable to search engines. Therefore it stands to reason that Flash shouldn't be used to build an entire site.

Flash content is now recognized and indexed by Google.

http://flashseo.com