think tank forum

The number of Adobe Flash sites are growing, and an increasing amount
of sites will simply cease to function when Flash is disabled or
unavailable.

I would like to call to all web developers to (re)consider their use
of Flash, while it does have place on the web, it is often used in the
wrong way, on the wrong place, in a badly implemented manner.

Why I dislike flash:

o It often adds little or nothing to a website, most things can often
be achieved with either CSS or Javascript (or a combination) which
suffer from much less problems.

o Flash is not usable, for example it often breaks the back button,
"find in page" does not work, setting font size does not work, and
many more.

o Browser settings such as font size, enabling/disabled sound in web
pages etc. do not apply to flash, leaving the page's designer, not the
user, in control of the browser.

o Flash is not accessible, screen readers, braille displays etc. often
have serious difficulty accessing flash pages.

o Progressive enhancement is difficult to achieve with flash, unlike
for example CSS or Javascript, flash is binary data which interacts
poorly with HTML.

o Flash is not supported on all operating systems, and only on a very
limited set of architectures.

o Flash is slow, if you do not have a new $1000 PC but a somewhat older
"office PC" flash can be a serious performance hit.

o There are a number of security issues with flash, and Adobe has
never seemed to quick/concerned to fix them.

o Animation is annoying, I want to access information, not watch a
"cool" animation.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned