What is so evil about a Flash based website?
Solution 1:
Flash is infamous for its poor accessibility.
Keyboard navigation does not usually work, and Flash (up until recently) did not have search engine support.
Flash applications does not work in mobile phones and other portable devices.
Flash is not there in the iPhone!!!
Flash is controlled by a single company (Adobe) and so it is not following any well defined standards for the Internet.
The beauty of Internet lies in the fact that you can always view the source code of any website you are in. This way you can use the same programming/design techniques in your website or you can find security flaws in the web application. This is not possible in Flash. In Flash, source code is closed.
The big question is, why should you use Flash "except when you are creating games or multimedia-content rich applications"?
jtyost2 says, "I would also add that you can't directly link to any content inside of a Flash site, thus breaking one of the major factors that makes the Internet, the Internet, links."
Solution 2:
- content weight
- usability
- crawlability of search engine bots
- accessibility
- ease of use (disputable)
- technology encumbrance (added software required to access the site)
- security issues (needing to add software comes with issues involved with installing or running that software/player of the content)
[Edit] Why I place usability and ease of use separate is best explained in this link
Usability:
- a result – software that is usable;
- a process, also called user-centered design, for creating usable software;
- a set of techniques, such as contextual observation and usability testing, used to achieve that result; or
- a philosophy of designing to meet user needs?
Ease of use:
- Effective
- Efficient
- Engaging
- Error Tolerant
- Easy to Learn
I agree with the comments on that site, but this is all debatable...could be a good stackoverflow question: is usability and ease of use the same? IMO part of usability is ease of use and vice versa, but they are not necessarily the same.
I hope I don't enfuriate the more semantical sensitive with this edit :-)
Solution 3:
Interestingly everyone here blasts Flash/Silverlight and you would do well to recognise that this is only one side of the coin.
Flash (and Flex) allow web site designers significantly more flexibility and richer content for their site and this works in a variety of situations - e.g. sites relating to movies, or bands, sites for kids, sites for games etc.
Certainly, there are many reasons to not choose Flash/Flex/Silverlight, but one can do sites just as inaccessible in JavaScript these days. I have previously worked with JavaScript products that have no reasonable usability by blind people, or web crawlers.
Flash penetration (from a biased source to be sure) is 99%+ (http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html), which means that those that say "would never visit a Flash site" are in the 1% of the population that do no install Flash, do not watch YouTube or movie trailers online.
So, you need to be mindful of your audience. Certain audiences and situations would definitely be better off with plain HTML pages and a minimum of JavaScript (government websites, programming websites are two areas that spring to mind). Other times it is because the audience are office workers that are not allowed to install Flash in the browsers.
Rich Internet Applications (RIA) is one area where there is a distinct clash/struggle between the Flex/Silverlight and JavaScript/CSS/HTML sides. I've worked with both, and I'm now of the opinion that requiring Flex/Silverlight plug-ins is fairly reasonable, though you can still lose some visitors if the application is public.
In summary - you're best to identify your audience, identify what they're willing/able to use and then based on such limitations decide on your technology.
Solution 4:
Flash and Silverlight based sites typically go against basic Internet conventions with their closed models.
For example, most Flash & Silverlight based sites:
- Ignore the back/fwd button.
- Don't allow you to send anyone a URL to a specific place on the site, or bookmark a specific spot for later via your browser
- Place the internet in a fixed size box. No dynamic sizing for wider monitors or higher resolutions.
Solution 5:
"I was about to click checkout but I wanted to change something so I hit the back button"