10 reasons why all-Flash websites usually suck
Last week, Simon Sundén published a post in Swedish called 10 anledningar varför sajter helt byggda i Flash oftast suger (10 Reasons why sites completely built in Flash usually suck).
He’s right. They do. There are numerous reasons why all-flash sites fail to be a good choice. Simon had a problem getting down to as few as 10. In all my years I’ve still yet to be presented with a convincing argument for a site to be totally Flash-based.
Here is a brief translation of Simon’s 10 reasons. Some of the 10 points do have workarounds or solutions, but that’s like treating an illness you could have avoided catching in the first place.
- Long loading-times
- Accessibility
- Mobile compatibility
- Problems with visitor statistics
- Browser & mouse functions (CTRL-F, right-click, etc)
- No unique URLs – forget “caring is sharing”
- Back and Forward buttons don’t work
- Copy and Paste
- Indexing by search-engines
- Internal links and SEO
Flash objects have their use, but put quite simply, a wholly Flash-based site just doesn’t live up to the web standards we should be following to make the browsing experience more enjoyable and successful.