On The Use Of Flash In Modern Website Design

If you've used the internet, you've used flash. Loads of websites run on it - particularly any with what are often now called 'dynamic elements', like moving bits that respond to your mouse. There are both benefits and drawbacks to using flash on your site, and this article hopes to examine some of them in greater detail to help you make an informed decision.

The most important thing of all to bear in mind, though, is that whatever you decide you absolutely must not overuse flash. Gimmicky, overly complex websites are slow and clunky, and drive people away; make sure you're only using flash scripts where you need to and where they genuinely work well for you and for anyone visiting your site.

The Drawbacks Of Flash

Unless you're using minimal flash scripting that has been written by a conscientious and talented flash programmer who is working with speed in mind, flash will slow your site down. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of them is that everything needs to be downloaded at once - rather than with HTML or CSS, where only the bits currently on the screen need to be served up.

You'll also find that flash can penalise your SEO efforts. Web crawlers will regard flash scripts as being images rather than text, and flash links as not existing at all. This means that they won't pick up on them in the same way that they would ordinarily-scripted content, and are likely to overlook you as a result of that. This is why you must always combine flash with other website design elements, rather than relying on it in its entirety.

For someone to see flash in their browser, they'll need to have a plugin installed. Now, in practice, pretty much all PC browsers do this automatically - but some people and companies remove them, and some older browsers don't have them at all. Then there's the fact that more and more people are browsing the internet on portable touchscreen devices of varying size - many of which don't come with flash as standard.

As well as all that, flash renders really badly on small screens. This is more important now than it has been for many years, as ideally you need your website to work properly on smartphones and tablets as well as on computers.

When To Use Flash

There are, of course, times when flash is exactly right - and here are a few of them. Just remember to use it well and sparingly, and to not rely on it for your entire site.

  • If you want to embed video or games in a way that will work with all browser and operating system configurations, flash is the way to do that. It can help to speed them up, too.
  • Vector graphics are useful for some design purposes, and flash handles them much better than most of the other options you have for using them online. This goes for fonts, too, which often look better when rendered as images rather than as text.
  • Most dynamic elements work well in flash, and while there are all kinds of drawbacks to using a 'splash page' if yo