NO.2 DON’T USE FLASH
There are so many reasons why Flash shouldn’t belong on your website. For one thing, Flash has a long history of security flaws, bugs and malware. Moreover, these days, people are encouraged to block sites that use Flash because of security issues.
However, there are a lot more reasons why Flash is a bad idea including:
- Search engines don’t like Flash. Flash website pages don’t get indexed properly by search engines because search bots can’t read Flash content. This will result in poor search engine rankings.
- Flash requires significant bandwidth. Don’t assume that your visitor has a high-speed internet connection. Lots of people are still using dialup and other limited bandwidth connections. Flash files, particularly those which use sound effects, bitmap images and embedded movies, can take ages to load.
- Flash is not supported on Apple and many other mobile devices. Those users will therefore completely miss out on your site’s content and this could be up to 70-80% of all mobile users.
- Flash is poor practice in terms of making your website accessible to visually impaired visitors. Flash websites can’t be properly accessed by visually impaired people using special screen readers – they are unreadable by the browser and will appear blank.
- Flash can be astoundingly annoying and ultimately ignores your visitors’ needs. Flash doesn’t take into account the possibility that your visitor may not want to endure site intros and splash screens, or to hear sound effects – what if they’re browsing from a quiet work cubicle, or are trying not to wake a sleeping person?
