Quit making me wait!

I was reading an article over at Grok that reminded me that in one of my earlier articles I said that I was going to go explain my feelings about flash...

Don't mistake me when I say that I don't hate all things flash...I believe that there is a time and place for such indulgence. But what absolutely drives me nuts is when it gets in the way of me doing what I came to do in the first place. If I was intending to play an flash game or sit through an online demonstration it would be a different story. But thats rarely what I go online to do.

What ultimately pisses me off the most are loading sequences. I hate them. It reminds me of when I was 5 years old and my dad would grab me by the back of my shirt in mid stride to keep me from wandering off. I hated that feeling of not being able to get to where I wanted to go and being brought to an abrupt stop...every time I get to one of these loading sequences it feel that tug on the back of my shirt.

And those sequences are everywhere. Sometimes I get to a site and five things begin loading...and firing off individually when they are finished loading. Then I have five areas all animating and screaming at me for attention...argh! I just wanted to order a sub!

There are a multitude of reasons to not use flash from a technical standpoint of which I wont really bore you with all of them here - but I am inclined mention a few...

The largest reason are search engines. If you trap your content in flash don't expect them to index it...flash is a black hole when it comes to searchable content. But even if they ultimately figure out a way around search issues I still don't see it taking over the web. Tracking visitor behavior is still wishy washy not to mention that people are just much more knowledgeable (and therefore comfortable) with markup than flash. HTML is also free - Adobe Flash is $700.

Another issue for me is the tendancy for designers to go way overboard with animation. This degrades usability the more of it there is. If I were to give the flash website designer some advice - it would be to make their websites like regular HTML websites. Sound silly? Well, maybe making a website entirely in flash is just that. The truth is that people are used to the web behaving and functioning in a certain way- they expect immediate gratification. I dont care how pretty the transition from one page to the next is - show me the damn page already!

Thats not to say that flash sites arent beautiful. And there is alot more free reign with design when it comes to flash - you arent held up by browser variances or the limitations of markup. For certain instances flash makes complete sense to use as a delivery method - such as movie or gaming sites. (But even then I could get easily annoyed...)

Understand that I'm not speaking as a hater. I know flash well and have been using it for years and continue to develop with it...but it is increasingly rare, and when I do its sparingly. It has its place.

All I can do is plead with the flash junkies out there to quit endulging themselves and consider their audience before succumbing to the temptation to animate...

Because no one wants you grabbing on the back of their shirt!