For those who are familiar with web design or development, they probably have heard about Flash. They know how it will make a website look cool and interactive. However, they also are aware how Flash is not really advisable in modern web design. Here are 5 reasons that Flash ought to be avoided in modern web design.

  • Flash ‘breaks’ website usability standards. Web pages designed using Flash may appear perfect, but visitors might become frustrated once they try to navigate around the website since:
    • They can’t utilize the back button for navigation because it is disabled.
    • They would not be able to occasionally copy-paste information like phone numbers, addresses, etc.
    • They could not increase the size of the font to make the web text more readable.
    • They would not be able to bookmark a webpage within the website.
  • Flash produces cross compatibility issues. It is important that your newly designed website work in any web browser and computer platform.
  • It would have W3C validation problems. W3C or World Wide Web Consortium is the primary organization for web standards that provides a free tool to certify that HTML programming is syntactically accurate. However, standard Flash files and objects embedded in the modern HTML or XHTML version doesn’t validate correctly.
  • Flash presents SEO problems. Even though the search engine Google has teamed up with Adobe, Flash information is frequently ‘invisible’ to a number of other search engine sites such as Bing, MSN, etc. as they are hidden in graphic formats that are difficult to be found and processed by the software scanners that the search engines utilize.
  • Flash causes webpage loading problems. Flash files, especially annoying whiz-bang ones that make noise, make things blink, and otherwise drive people crazy may also slow down the load time of your website. This would eventually decrease the number of web visitors as people simply do not sit around and wait.

Box 9 Design can design and build a website for you that has all the attractiveness and functionality of a Flash site without using Flash. Modern HTML5 and CSS3 techniques can create a wide array of sights and sounds while remaining standards compliant and SEO friendly.