Flash is pretty popular these days, but many people (especially customers) seem not to realize its weak points, which result in low popularity and usually lower profit in the end.

Here’s the list of main disadvantages of Flash technology :

* Flash plug-in is not built into browsers, so there’s no guarantee that vistors will really see your website or its Flash elements

* visitors can’t rely on browser’s “Back” button, in most cases pushing it results in coming back to first site and flash loading anew

* under mouse’s right click there are no standard options available like “Copy” or “Select All”

* it’s very diffcult to optimize Flash websites for search engines

* visitors using text browsers won’t see website

* Flash devours a lot of system resources, it requires much and requires good computer to work properly

* Flash files are usually relatively big, so it takes pretty much time to download and open

* printing is inconvenient, and very often even impossible

* visitors can’t add any of subpages to their favourites, just main site

Obviously you can always make alternative non-FLASH version of your site, but do you (or your client) have really so much money and time to invest in two seperate sites with exactly same infomation? Personally I share following opinion “Flash programmers like to use Flash for web sites because they can, not because it adds very much to the user experience. (the sentence taken from “Why not Flash?” article at Integra Web Design - http://www.integrawebdesign.co.uk/flash.htm). And as I can understand Flash developers, I don’t understand customers who care whether website looks good for them and on their computers and don’t really care about their visitors.

Przemek Sobstel (aka Sopel)
http://www.sopel.webd.pl