Web design implemented affordable (and, mostly, available)  tools to make the best of whatever little resources the Internet had to offer.  Picture one of these impromptu science projects made with rubber bands, an eraser, two pencils, no time and that’s pretty much what the first web designers had to work with.  On these rudimentary times, everything was a blend of logic, out-of-the-box programming and hope.

And then there was Flash.  If you haven’t played Flash games or seen Flash animations, you probably have spent years in a cave.

Flash became the cat’s pajamas and everyone was using it.  It gave websites dynamic and multimedia-oriented contents at a fast, budget-friendly rate.  In the blink of an eye, the Internet was flooded to the rim with animations, dynamic text, sound and multiple menu options.  Users slowly but steadily got interested in this new tool, learned how to master it and both designers and users created a new standard for the industry.

At what cost?

As much as we love shiny things, not all of them are gold.  There are several design issues that make Flash a pain in the neck, design and SEO wise.  Sure, the aesthetical benefits of Flash-enhanced sites are vast:  Interactivity increases to dramatic levels, the possibilities of content delivery are almost infinte and adding video and audio to sites became an easier task.  That would be enough to keep visitors amused and clicking…

… once again, at what cost?

1.  Time

You have seen it, we have all seen it, almost in distress:  the endless loading bar slowly crawling to its other end.  We wait and oh, God, how we wait.  The loading rate moves to almost torturing levels.  You would think that feel grateful for having this easy visual information displayed… but there is a problem:  sometimes, more often than not, Flash sites take forever to download.

2.  Time (once again)

Programming a Flash site is a more strenuous and slow process.  Latest versions have a more intuitive approach to it, but you’ll never catch a professional designer dead using these rookie-oriented tools.  Everything is made through ActionScript, a programming language that has little or nothing to do with HTML and PHP.  It’s not simple, it’s not easy and it’s not time-effective.

3. Time (is money!)

The relation between costs and benefits is really unfair here.  Let us asume for a second that visitors are willing to embrace the site’s experience so they are willing to forgive the infinite loading time.  It took your flashy Flash designer hours of work to come up with two minutes of animation and weeks to design a site.  Too little for too much.

4. Time (to talk about SEO)

Web search engines don’t really care about flash content.  Considering that ActionScript sources do not have as many attributes as HTML or PHP and that usually all the text and pictures load within a Flash Player application that is foreign to the site, web browsers cannot read but the code used to embed the player to the site.  Chances of optimization grow really thin.

This does not mean, however, that Flash is unsuitable for implementation.  There’s got to be lots of interactive applications to seduce the potential customers.  Give them an entertaining content and they will love you forever.  So perhaps it is your responsibility to always remember that a site is both sensorial and informatic data.  Use Flash for applications within the site where you need people to interact or where multimedia contents are needed and use other languages to rank high on search queries.  There is always perils, but common sense is the second tool you need the most when designing a web site.

Looking for different professional website design alternatives?  We can help you create a flashy website quick, easy and easy on your wallet.