Flash Philosophy (written in 2000)

Flash still seems to divide web developers into two distinct camps. On the one hand you have the text-ite who hates Flash intros, and on the other you have the web designers who need to use Flash in order to justify the sums of money they charge (bit of a generalisation?).

Both sides have got a certain amount of truth on their side, but it is somehow easier to understand the arguments of the few stragglers in the middle who consider careful use of Flash to be a useful addition to a site.

In terms of speed-of-download, smoothness and funkiness: Flash is GREAT. But sometimes we have to ask questions about what would happen if it were not there. Questions like what have we really got under all this makeup. If a website is mutton dressed with a Flash intro are we really going to be thankful after patiently sitting through the 5 minute movie to find that the site at the end of the tunnel is not what we might have hoped for.

But, it's not just that. We rarely think of the poor soles for whom Flash has not befriended. These may be users of non-Windows computers who haven't got the latest version of Explorer or Netscape 6*. What do we do for these people?

My answer is to create a site that ANYONE can view, but that people who have got access to Flash will see a little extra, whilst getting exactly the same information as their poorer relations. This is one solution, there are others...

In terms of having moving images on your computer screen, Javascript and DHTML have some tricks of their one. But once again it comes down to which browser you are using and the interpretation of the ECMA standard that it uses (no such problem with Flash), and then there is the fact that all the elements that move must be loaded up first and Flashes vector graphics will doubtless be smaller than the standard jpeg or gif.

I generalise, but hopefully the world will be a good place whether you have Flash or not... we live in hope.
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