Today, while venturing into the usually painful-to-read comments at Gizmodo, I ran across a real gem. A reader dropped one of the best analogies I’ve heard in a very long time. A little context: Gizmodo ran a mildly-sensationalist story about how the iPhone’s web browser is missing some common funtionality — notably Flash and Java support. In the piece, they quoted Steve Jobs, who awkwardly had said, “Our innovative approach, using Web 2.0-based standards, lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable.”
Try telling Frank Sinatra that ‘Night and Day’ wasn’t a ‘standard’ just because Cole Porter actually made money on it.
— Wilson Rothman
Let’s ignore the fact that there’s no such thing as “Web 2.0-based standards” and assume Jobs was simply referring to web standards.
One commenter railed back that “Flash is proprietary format and while there are W3C standard ways to support it, Flash it’s self [sic] is not standard since its a licensed format that is not free for the content creator, only the end user.”
I hear this silly attack on Flash from web standards-aware designers and developers all the time. While it’s true that Flash is not technically a web standard (as in, it hasn’t received a stamp of approval from the W3C), that doesn’t make it any less viable as a deployment strategy for web applications (or parts of web applications).
In response, Wilson Rothman opined, “Try telling Frank Sinatra that ‘Night and Day’ wasn’t a ‘standard’ just because Cole Porter actually made money on it. Let’s cut the semantics and focus on the gist: If everyone uses it, it’s a standard.”
Amen, brother. A-freaking-men.
001 // Grant Blakeman // 07.02.2007 // 11:24 AM
Nice analogy. I think a lot of damage is done to the efforts of the standards community when they try to treat flash like a second-class citizen. I’ve seen people thumb their noses at brilliantly designed sites with excellent UIs simply because the site was built in flash.
The reality is, whether someone likes it or not, there is a place for flash. And when other web designers/developers are being asked by their clients to execute things that really can only be done in flash (or are best done in flash), what message does the standards community send when they can’t even acknowledge the good work that comes out of those efforts?
It’s possible for someone to do 100% standards compliant work and still have it be crap from a content, design, UI standpoint, so why should it get a pass when great stuff done in flash gets crucified?
I don’t do much flash work myself, but this is a trend that has really bothered me for a while…
002 // Geof Harries // 07.02.2007 // 11:36 AM
All too often people confuse standard with open source. Simply because the Flash codebase is not modifiable doesn’t translate to it being a non-standard. Using this logic, does this make OpenLaszlo the standard? I think not.
003 // Nate Klaiber // 07.02.2007 // 11:42 AM
@Grant > I’ve seen people thumb their noses at brilliantly designed > sites with excellent UIs simply because the site was built in flash.
I think the real issue here is not that the UI is bad, but that it is different from what everyone is used to. Scrollbars don’t always look like scrollbars. Form fields don’t always look like form fields, buttons don’t always look like buttons. UI’s like this cause people to have to learn their UI before using it. I have witnessed this first hand with several usability studies. So, this doesn’t make Flash bad - but when every Flash developer wants to create their own UI to be different - it often causes more headachen than is worth.
I agree that someone could build a 100% standards based site, and have it suck from an actual users perspective. This is very prevalent all over the web.
As you stated, Flash is a tool and has its place. It is a matter of really weighing in on the question ‘Is flash the right tool for this job?’. Too many people use Flash just because they can. But they never stop to question if it is beneficial.
Flash should not be shunned because it is flash. Education is the key here. Understand what things Flash does best, and understand where it fails. Same is true for HTML.
004 // Josh Clark // 07.02.2007 // 11:44 AM
Great parallel! This isn’t nearly as groovy an analogy — how could it be, without a Sinatra reference? — but GIF images likewise represent a proprietary format that is nevertheless an accepted standard. (Of course, in the case of GIF images, there’s a great alternative open-source format in the PNG format, while there’s no real open-source alternative to Flash, with apologies to OpenLaszlo.)
Re “If everyone uses it, it’s a standard,” I generally agree. I’m all in favor of the WHATWG approach to adapting standards to fit real-world practices. The dogmatic approach wears thin. But of course it’s a bad idea to go too far with “everyone uses it” as a criterion, else standards become a lowest-common-denominator affair. I’m guessing that a significant majority of web pages still use tables for layout, and none of us are in a hurry to endorse that practice as a web standard. I’m not suggesting that you’re saying otherwise, just pointing out that standards have to have, well… standards. Apologies if I’m being overly pedantic.
For Flash, though, I completely agree. It’s a solid, widespread technology as reliable as any approved by a formalized standards body. A totally legitimate choice for any designer’s songbook.
005 // Jeff Croft // 07.02.2007 // 11:46 AM
But none of that is the fault of Flash. It’s the fault of the designer using Flash. You can make buttons that don’t look like buttons and scrollbars that don’t look like scrollbars using web standards, too, right?
Don’t blame the technology for poor design — I think that’s Grant’s point.
Too many web standards advocates use HTML/CSS/JavaScript when Flash is the right tool for the job, too (see Flickr’s organizer, for example — it’s slow as hell, and would be great as a Flash app).
Yep, couldn’t agree more. :)
006 // Andrew Walkingshaw // 07.02.2007 // 12:38 PM
The problem with Flash is that there’s no way of reimplementing the player from scratch, and that matters. It doesn’t matter that the Adobe Flash player’s closed, or the editor - but the Flash file format’s not documented, which means you’re locked into Adobe’s proprietary viewers and editors. Essentially, you’re handing a degree of control of your information over to Adobe, and there are circumstances where that’s a bad tradeoff.
At least theoretically, if you write HTML/CSS/JS according to web standards, someone can come along and implement the spec, and wind up with a program (maybe a browser, maybe not - who knows what the future holds?) which can understand your documents. (And this has happened twice now - Gecko/Firefox and KHTML/Webkit - and it’d be hard to argue the web isn’t a better place for it.)
While the Flash file format is closed, you can’t do that. For example, you can’t read Flash on any platform Adobe chooses not to support, or in any political climate where Adobe won’t distribute their software. Wearing my academic hat, that bothers me.
Of course, that’s not a dealbreaker for all, maybe even most, applications of Flash, or in all contexts, but it is a legitimate concern. I know you’re coming at this from a design perspective, and that’s fair enough - but there are legit political/practical concerns too. For me, the semantics/openness/platform independence of web standards is as important as the visual/presentational side of it, but your tradeoff might well be in a different place.
007 // Ryan Berg // 07.02.2007 // 12:52 PM
A little bit of devils advocacy here:
Then should IE6’s bugs have been the standard we coded HTML/CSS to when its marketshare was over 90% ?
008 // Jeff Croft // 07.02.2007 // 12:55 PM
Yes, and I think they were. I know I coded IE6 hacks into my CSS — didn’t you?
009 // Jason Rutherford // 07.02.2007 // 1:07 PM
My main problem with the Flash player and probably the real reason it was left off the iPhone is that it is a dog in OS X (especially compared to Windows). If Adobe got it leaner and less processor hungry I would bet it could be added to the iPhone.
010 // Jeff Croft // 07.02.2007 // 1:13 PM
I agree with you that Flash is too slow on OS X and should be optimized. But, with only a ~650MHz processor, it’s doubtful they could ever make Flash light enough to run well on the iPhone.
011 // Nate Klaiber // 07.02.2007 // 1:31 PM
@Jeff Croft
Agreed, it is not the fault of flash, but of the developer. However, Is it possible to get a consistent look for scrollbars inside of flash? Scrollbars in Safari are different from scrollbars in IE and FF. So using Flash solely for form UI’s would then render inconsistently to the browsers default UI.
Agreed. I think this is the key. Web standards advocates are literally so afraid of Flash, that they would do anything else versus using Flash for the job. Even if it complicates the process.
012 // Matt Howell // 07.02.2007 // 1:40 PM
I love it. It’s such a perfect analogy (even down to the same term!), I’m amazed I’ve never seen anyone use it before.
013 // Jeff Croft // 07.02.2007 // 1:41 PM
Well, that’s a bit different than “scrollbars don’t look like scrollbars”. That’s more, “scrollbars don’t look like the default scrollbars for my browser/operating system.” I don’t personally consider it a UI gaffe to have scrollbars that don’t look like my default OS or browser scrollbars — as long as they’re recognizable as scrollbars and work the way I expect them to.
I’m not honestly sure if it’s possible to get truly default-looking scrollbars cross-browser and cross-platform in Flash — I doubt it. But, I don’t consider that to be an especially important consideration for UI, I guess. I love sexy, non-default-styled forms when they’re done well.
Yeah — that’s a problem, for sure.
014 // Natalie Jost // 07.02.2007 // 2:20 PM
If everyone uses it, it’s a standard.
Does “everyone” use flash? :D
015 // Jeff Croft // 07.02.2007 // 2:42 PM
@Nat: Everyone? No. But, more people have the Flash 8 or 9 plugin than have a browser that supports modern CSS (as in, IE6-level). So, if you think enough people have CSS to make it a viable deployment technology, then obviously enough people have Flash, too.
016 // Kevin Hamm // 07.02.2007 // 3:24 PM
“everyone uses Word” therefore it’s a standard? Not hardly, and anyone who thinks so is horribly mistaken. And possibly creating headaches for their legal departments. Just because you have access to something doesn’t mean you should use it — especially if you don’t have a good handle on what to use it for (which seems to be the biggest problem of flash).
I can’t imagine why people do this, but I’ve gotten several contacts over the years in Word format. Contracts that I’m to sign and return to them, so I read, edit, and sign.
They don’t realize that I’ve usually added something benign like “Contractor shall be served a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey every friday, paid for by Company.” Why? Because they think it’s locked and set and that this is the standard for business. After all, I’m just getting a page to print, right? Nothing big about that, but it’s the basic understanding of what Word is for that leads to confusion. Flash has the same problem, only more so.
Don’t confuse ubiquitous with standardized. After all, using tables for layout on the web was more ubiquitous, but never a standard.
017 // Jeff Croft // 07.02.2007 // 3:34 PM
Kevin: I gotta disagree. Word, like flash, is absolutley a de factor standard. However, flash’s position is even stronger as a much higher percentage of those who browse the web have flash than those who deal with text documents have Word.
And, using an HTML table for layout was, and still is a perfectly standards-compliant way to construct a web page. Don’t confuse “standard” with “best practice.” :)
018 // Aapo Laitinen // 07.03.2007 // 1:11 AM
Andrew (#6) got his facts slightly wrong. Flash is documented and you can get those documents from Adobe. However, the licensing terms of said documentation explicitly forbid you from creating your own player, and only allow creating authoring tools. Therefore I tend to agree with his sentiment. I have flirted with Flash and Flex, and learned some of the basics, but I find myself unable to commit to really learning it due to the closed nature of the standard.
Also, in my day job I need to take Linux users into account. Flash player is available on Linux, but is only available on a limited range configurations and very rarely part of a distro (“installation disks”, essentially). Despite the recent successes by reverse-engineered Flash player replacement called Gnash, I don’t see the situation changing significantly unless Adobe makes the documentation available to player developers.
019 // Andrew Walkingshaw // 07.03.2007 // 7:30 AM
Aapo (#18) - thank you, I stand corrected.
Basically, my instinctive reaction is that Flash is a good choice for UIs in certain circumstances, but websites with their primary contents exclusively in Flash give me the fear - if any of the content, or any of the functionality, of a site is only accessible through Flash, then it’s de facto inaccessible to some users. For what I do, I can’t make that tradeoff.
Web services go a long way to fixing this, actually, by decoupling the presentation of the site from the content - even more strongly than HTML/CSS does. I think that’s what I’m uneasy with; the mixing of presentation and content in Flash files. If the Flash UI is just calling the same services any other tool for accessing the content could use, then it’s a bit of a non-issue; if Flash breaks, and if you care enough, you can get to the content some other way.
What’s the current accessibility situation with Flash, too? I haven’t got a clue, so flouting years of Internet tradition, I’m not gonna speculate…
Again, I’m in a university, so I see a lot more Linux than most people; as Aapo says, Flash isn’t ubiquitous there - it’s probably less than 50/50, and Word certainly isn’t. In my area of research, the standard for the best journals is TeX/LaTeX. The big academic publishers are explicitly not accepting Word 2007 yet - because it breaks backwards compatibility with an undocumented de-facto ‘standard’, Word 2000/2003 format, which they’ve got tools for. And those niches - Linux users, academics, etc - are overrepresented among both the standards community and the voluble bit of the Web, so no doubt you hear a lot of us…
020 // Joe Winter // 07.03.2007 // 7:43 AM
I prefer not to use Flash because I don’t particularly like Macromedia’s development environment (slow, no Emacs keybindings, movie/frames are good for animation, but awkward for UI construction, only runs on Windows and OS X) and there’s no mature alternatives. For one of our products, build times were ~3 minutes. It was a productivity killer.
But there are some things (inline streaming video/certain animation) where you have to suck it up and use it. Regardless of your productivity , it’s the best choice for your users.
(I do think that non-Linux users underestimate how crappy the Flash player is in Linux, though. It doesn’t play nice with the Linux sound system and you have to kill your browser once you want to listen to something other than Flash.)
021 // Josh Clark // 07.03.2007 // 7:56 AM
Great point. But that might be where the Cole Porter analogy breaks down. I think it’s fair to say that songbook standards were standards because they were considered both popular and best-practice.
022 // Jeff Croft // 07.03.2007 // 8:47 AM
There is no reason you have to mix content with presentation when developing in Flash. This is a common misconception. You can mix content with presentation, just like you can mix content with presentation using HTML. You can also cleanly separate the two.
Again, this is the fault of poor developers/designers, not the fault of the technology.
023 // Joe Winter // 07.03.2007 // 9:41 AM
If you think education is the key here, can you talk more about how you’re using Flash? Are you building custom form widgets in Flash instead of JS/HTML/CSS? Do you want to start building whole sites/applications in Flash?
I like SIFR, and it opened up a new way of thinking about Flash to me, but it sounds like you’re using Flash in broader ways. I want to what they are.
024 // Dan Mall // 07.03.2007 // 11:15 AM
Right on. I think that’s part of the power of Flash. The HTML/CSS model is great when content and presentation need to be separate, but there are certain times where the presentation is the content, or at least enhances it. For instance, say you wanted to communicate how much a stock’s value has increased over time. With HTML, you can easily represent that content as a table with 2 columns: start value and end value. However, an animated graph showing the gradual change over time enhances the message. Even further, an interactive graph with a draggable slider where a user can pinpoint an exact moment in the life of that stock uses the presentation to supplement the content. Flash definitely has a role to play in semantic web design and development, but there are only a handful of people that have taken the time to investigate.
I’d like to revise that and say it’s the fault of uneducated developers/designers. Like you said, education is key, and is exciting for me to see it being talked about. The discussion has sort of shifted from your original thought, Jeff, but I’m happy to see where it’s going. Thanks for posting this.
025 // Andrew Walkingshaw // 07.03.2007 // 12:54 PM
And here we have the difference in perspective t in a nutshell, I think.
Solely as a visual representation, I actually agree. However, it damages the data beyond repair, for my purposes, if that’s the only way it’s presented - and that’s something which I, and I guess people who agree with me, can’t and won’t compromise on. If the site were to, say, pull the data from a service and then present it using a Flash, or Java, or Javascript widget/applet, or as an SVG graph (now there’s a technology which really has been hamstrung by lack of implementation in IE) - I don’t much care which - that’s really cool, of course. But if the only way you can get to the data is through this Flash widget, then the data is locked in there, and data which can’t be processed and transformed further isn’t, in a sense, really part of the Web. At least you can screen-scrape (X)HTML, as little fun as that might be, because the standard’s open.
Okay, that’s basically stating axioms you may not agree with, but the argument’s basically that if you can get to the data, you can always fix the presentation later, but if the data’s locked in now, it’s locked in forever.
So, yeah, it’d be perfectly possible, even given this pretty militant position I’m taking, for me to use Flash - or just about any other technology - to get an end result. We’re not even really disagreeing, I think. We’re just coming at things from different perspectives, and, to an extent, at cross-purposes. Like Jeff’s said, it’s all in how a technology’s used.
It strikes me that to an extent the current use of Flash is the equivalent of what table-based HTML was - or maybe the DHTML/DOM0 days of Javascript; that there are some people ‘doing the right thing’, whatever that is, but way more people merrily hacking away producing Flash documents without thinking about the nature of the underlying data and what might be done with it in the future. But, then, I work designing markup languages and data-processing systems for scientists, so of course I’m going to have a skewed perspective…
026 // Jeff Croft // 07.03.2007 // 1:19 PM
I don’t think anyone would suggest that the data only be available through Flash. Obviously it would be stored in a database, XML, HTML, or some other parseable format, as well — that’s where Flash would get it from!
027 // Dan Mall // 07.03.2007 // 3:02 PM
What Jeff said :)
028 // Andrew Walkingshaw // 07.03.2007 // 3:17 PM
Oh, I wish :) There are all kinds of lunacy out there.
People who give you a GIF file of a graph and wonder why they “just load the points into an Excel spreadsheet” - or the 2D pictures of molecules into their structure editor. People who think that if they give you their data as a table in a PDF file, that’s all you need. You’d be horrified…
029 // Jeff Croft // 07.03.2007 // 3:40 PM
Andrew, that’s an entirely different problem than Flash being used for data storage. You’re talking about novice computer users not understanding file formats and what they do. I’m talking about professional web designers and developers. Obviously, any serious web developer would know better than to store data in a SWF. If they don’t, they’ve got a lot of learning left to do.
030 // adobe_schmobe // 07.03.2007 // 4:03 PM
@Jeff: You might wanna rethink this statement
And then maybe review Adobe’s portfolio, and then maybe realize flash it already running on processors with less capability. On mobile phones. And has for quite some time.
031 // Andrew Walkingshaw // 07.03.2007 // 5:10 PM
Jeff, sorry - I think I strayed off on a major tangent there. With who you’re talking about, you’re (of course!) absolutely on the money - last.fm, say, is a really good example of a Flash-heavy implementation, I guess? (And wouldn’t that be an awesome thing to have on the iPhone. Anyway.)
My apologies.
032 // Jeff Croft // 07.03.2007 // 6:09 PM
And then, after I do that, you can rethink your attitude and politely point out my errors in the future instead of being a total dick about them.
I’m not sure you’re correct, anyway. I don’t know of any mobile phones that run the full Flash player in a browser (maybe Windows Mobile does? Not sure.) I know of a lot of phones that run Flash Lite, but obviously that’s not the same, as it’s only up to Flash 7 level.
Next time, check yourself before you wreck yourself.
033 // Matt // 07.04.2007 // 2:48 AM
Nicely put!
034 // Glenn Franxman // 07.04.2007 // 9:01 AM
So I guess the bottom line is that the iPhone is simply web standards compliant while not being web standards complete. Shouldn’t be a big deal unless you banked your site’s strategy on flash in which case I doubt accessibility was high on your list of requirements.
035 // Jeff Croft // 07.04.2007 // 10:22 AM
Well, it just depends on what you mean by “web standards.” The iPhone is in very good shape when it comes to Web Standards, as in the main languages defined by the W3C as being the platform for front-end web development: HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS. If, by web standards, you mean, “stuff that is commonly used for web design and development, the iPhone is just okay. It supports a lot of these things — PDF, MP4, QuickTime, 3GP, MP3, AAC, WAV, etc — but doesn’t support Flash or Java, two of the biggest.
Technically Flash and Java aren’t “official” Web Standards, but they are de facto standards by way of their exceedingly common usage (especially Flash — Java is dying these days).
036 // Kevin Hamm // 07.04.2007 // 1:45 PM
And that’s where, as you’ve pointed out in the past, the language used to describe the web, and technology as a whole, is wholly lacking in accuracy and understandability. De facto standards vs. standards, site vs. web app. We need to use new words, then we can start to fix it. That’s my stance.
And Jeff, as always, you’re a great host for both standing your ground and allowing others their stance as well. Cheers!
037 // Tom Tobin // 07.04.2007 // 8:48 PM
I know I’ve bitched about Flash countless times at World Online (or whatever they’re calling it these days … ::twitch::); the discussion here has helped me realize that there’s a much more succinct way of stating my opinion: Proprietary standards are harmful. You’re right — Flash is a standard, whether I like it or not; it just happens to be a de facto, proprietary one.
038 // Dan Mall // 07.05.2007 // 1:16 PM
@Tom:
Proprietary standards are vague, but I don’t know that “harmful” is the right word. Valid HTML is a standard, as has been instrumental in promoting the idea of semantics. While inexact standards can lead to unexpected results, they can still point in the right direction. I’d be careful about being so general.
039 // Jeff Croft // 07.05.2007 // 1:20 PM
I would say proprietary standards have the potential to be harmful. Generally speaking, open stands do not (or at least not to the same degree).
I generally trust Adobe, so I don’t get too worried about it in the case of Flash.
040 // David Comdico // 07.05.2007 // 1:38 PM
The decentralization of information we’ve seen recently is the result of open standards. You may or may not see this as a good thing, but proprietary standards usually lead in the opposite direction. I like Flash and it is the appropriate tool for certain kinds of jobs, and it is indeed reviled for stupid reasons in some circles. But it is not and should not be a core web standard for the simple reason that it is proprietary. This is not a “silly attack” on Flash. And yes web standards are indeed a fragile, incomplete thing, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I’m sure Jeff is hard at work on some cool things that can be done by integrating Flash and I’m looking forward to reading about them.
In any event, the Jobs comment is obviously distortion-field spin and should hardly be taken at face value. One can only imagine how much intrigue goes on between Apple and Adobe. Maybe Apple is playing hardball and Adobe will relent and we’ll see Flash in the next version of the iPhone.
041 // Jeff Croft // 07.05.2007 // 1:45 PM
I didn’t suggest, nor do I believe, that Flash should be an official web standard. I don’t think anyone else suggested it, either.
I hope so. I’m still not convinced today’s Flash (i.e. ActionScript 3) would run well on the iPhone’s 650MHz processor, but I’d love for Apple and Adobe to prove me wrong!
042 // James Bennett // 07.08.2007 // 1:38 AM
The problem, as I see it, revolves around the proprietary nature of the system. Even if I “generally trust” Adobe, I have no guarantee that they won’t be bought out tomorrow by somebody I don’t trust, or that they won’t bring in new management with a decidedly different attitude.
If there were an open standard with royalty-free implementation rights, or a certified unencumbered third-party implementation under an open-source license, I wouldn’t have this problem. But neither of those things exist, so I have a problem: whenever I use Flash I’m making a trade, getting a shiny thing right now in exchange for worrying uncertainty later.
So I have a problem with Flash being a “standard” for the otherwise open Web I develop on: from where I stand, it’s a big, uncertain black box. And in my personal work I’m not convinced that the immediate benefits of relying on that black box outweigh the potential downsides of being tied to it later on. YMMV.
043 // Jeff Croft // 07.08.2007 // 9:56 AM
A few points:
044 // James Bennett // 07.08.2007 // 9:16 PM
Jeff, PDF has multiple implementations right now, some of them Free as in GPL, and Adobe’s putting it through the ISO standardization process to boot. So PDF is something I feel a lot more comfortable with than Flash. ECMAScript is, of course, an open standard, but Flash’s ActionScript is not; the Tamarin project is a good step, but until I can get a known-Free implementation of the entire Flash stack (or at least compiler and player) I’m going to be very wary of it.
And, honestly, I’d rather not have to go tell Dan tomorrow that Adobe got bought and we have to drop every use of Flash on every one of the World Online sites — there’s “care and attention” and there’s “crap, we have to rework all of that” ;)
045 // Chris // 07.09.2007 // 8:25 AM
Flash is the devils work!
No it’s not a standard
046 // Jeff Croft // 07.09.2007 // 8:47 AM
This, my friends, is exactly what I’m talking about. Someone dismissing Flash without providing any good reasons, and food for thought, or any alternatives. This is the kind of Web Standards Nazi attitude that pisses me off.
“I don’t care if it’s the best tool for the job — it’s wrong!”
People like this are obviously more interested in being right than doing good work. Personally, I think it comes from insecurity. There’s so much incredible design done in Flash that standards-oriented developers who aren’t as confident in their design skills have to dismiss it all as “wrong,” so that it doesn’t threaten their livelihood.
Annoying.
047 // Dave A. Chakrabarti // 07.10.2007 // 6:37 PM
Two reasons why I don’t like Flash:
Defacto standards for screen readers and other adaptive tech for special needs audiences can’t read it. This makes Flash inherently inaccessible unless you specifically build accessibility tools into it (which is a bad idea, since you can’t perfectly anticipate the accessibility needs for your audience). Nonprofits (and many for-profits) must maintain accessibility for their websites. As more of them become conscious of this (the recent Target lawsuit helped) they are forced to rule out Flash.
Search engines see Flash as an image. For someone conscious of internet marketing / SEO issues, this is a deal-breaker. SEO is complex, and there are many ways to counter this problem, but they are all workarounds; the essential problem prevents most Flash sites from ranking well for competitive keywords. As a result, most SEO firms won’t touch it.
I love the potential of dynamic Flash…I’ve been toying with the idea of building a Drupal theme in Flash, using custom php files to write data from the db into the movie appropriately. But for Flash to become a serious part of my work, it would have to fix both of the issues above. Until then, I’m forced to tinker with it (if I find the time) as a novelty.
Of course, my work is nonprofit-focused and my background includes SEO, so these are both issues I’ve dealt with in some detail. However, I think most developers / designers who champion Flash as a de facto standard ignore the fact that it is a standard only when you have the luxury of ignoring both of these issues.
Dave.
048 // Jeff Croft // 07.10.2007 // 6:52 PM
Dave:
I’m curious — why would you need “custom php files” to write data from the database into the movies? Flash can interact with your database directly via ActionScript, right? PHP seems like an unnecessary step, there.