Adobe Flash Web Design

2 July 2009

Before we get started I would like to make clear that we are not talking about that clean shaven blonde from the 1980 film Flash Gordon. Instead, we are going to look at Adobe Flash and attempt to shed light on its capabilities, drawbacks and disadvantages within web design.

Adobe Flash

So first things first... What is Adobe Flash?

Flash was first introduced to us in 1996 and was then called Macromedia Flash. It is a powerful and versatile tool used for constructing animations, websites and now more recently, applications.

Quite often I hear from graphic designers and website developers who do not like to work with Adobe Flash. They feel that the software is not user-friendly, too time consuming and should not be used within web design. I agree with bits of what they say, but I often feel that a lot of what they talk about comes down to a lack of knowledge in the software.

Personally, I love flash. I can get drawn into a project for hours creating animations, videos and interactive displays. However, I believe that there is both a time and a place for the software. If you have had a look at the homepage of this website, you will see we have a flash animation at the top of the page. It is nothing overly technical. It is a banner that has a slow transition effect running through some of the latest work we have done for our clients. We have designed this flash banner for our website to try to enhance the user experience of those who visit. It is something visually attractive to look at (hopefully you will agree) and it allows us to get a number of messages across in one small place. It is situations such as this that Adobe Flash becomes an exciting and interesting product.

So where should we avoid using Adobe Flash?

I am not a big fan of websites when design takes priority over objectives and this often becomes the case with websites built in Adobe Flash. All websites have a goal, whether that goal is to sell, to educate or to generate enquiries. To achieve these goals we website designers need to think about the target audience, about user journeys, about the best way to communicate and one hundred more other things. In a world when people want information on a plate as quickly as possible, they do not have the time to wait for the dial to reach 100% and the website to load.

The disadvantages of Adobe Flash in web design:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Flash websites do not currently get indexed by search engines such as Google and Yahoo. This means that it becomes difficult for businesses to market themselves online as the search engines cannot pick up on their goods or services because it cannot read the content on their website.

Loading Times - 10%... 30%... 40%... 43%... 45%... If I carried on typing you would have clicked off this page and it would have the same impact when people try to view a website. A Flash website can often take a lot longer to load and we cannot afford to miss out on those potential clients.

Restricting Flash - As Flash is often used for the design of advertisements and banners, some browsers will block them if they are regarded as a nuisance.

Flash Plug-in - Most website browsers do have Adobe Flash installed on them, but there are some cases when internet users do not have it. This would result in them not being able to view the flash at all without downloading it first.

Design taking priority - It is usually the fault of the web designer, but often websites built in flash take appearance over functionality and effectiveness.

Final Note

Web Designers must ensure that they do not get carried away when working with flash designs and that any website they produce has a balanced synergy between catering for user's expectations and design. A favourite web design term of mine is ‘don't decorate, communicate'.