The Creative Design Blog

Adobe Flash is popular among designers and creators working with animations and media. Source code is secured and interactivity is guaranteed. Through incorporating Flash, the customized website will be lightened up by mobile and interactive components. But believe it or not, there are a number of drawbacks to this amazing software. We would recommend that you do not use Flash for the site’s menu, nor should you use it for the whole website.

Not Search Engine Friendly: Major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo still have difficulties to crawl websites with Flash. It is therefore recommended by Google that we dial it back. This may be costing web developers a fortune, when you consider how much information on the website was kept away from potential customers, because search engines have problems listing Flash sites under its search results.

Immobility: In this society where we are highly mobilized (around 4.1 cellulars in 2008), it is disappointing when we cannot browse some information using mobile phones and iPhones just because we do not have Flash installed as Flash is not designed for mobile phones, or even iPhones as Apple has not yet got into cooperation with Adobe.

Lacking the Support For Maintaining Cross Platform: inserting Flash is not as easy as adding a HTML tags to a document. Some browsers need JavaScript support to load the page. There are many peculiarities that you will find when integrating elements of Flash into your website.

Flash Player Required: If you want to view Flash animations, you need to download the Flash Player from the Adobe website. However, you still can choose not to download it. Since it is not necessary, Flash Player is not a potentially valuable on your site.

Accessibility: For those with vision mischief or who use text readers without major modifications, Adobe Flash is not accessible. Therefore these Flash sites can’t be read. The government and higher education websites must be Section 508 Complaint – which Flash is not.

Cost: As compared to HTML, Flash is extremely costly. In addition to the $700 you paid for the software, there are extra costs when you want to upgrade it to the most recent versions. Not to forget the maintenance fee to keep everything running smoothly. The high cost is taking a toll on web developers who only own a small business.

Flash does help in many situations, but it is of importance to know its limitation when you want to utilize it to build your websites or when you are selecting a web developer.