Wednesday, April 15th, 2009, 1030 days ago

Don’t use flash as site’s navigator !

It is a strange thing that,  when i was a tutor, i taught students web design but they all interested in making flashing things like blink texts and cool flash effects. As they thought, flashing things attracted people’s attention, what a pity, they didn’t notice that flashing also took away the attention belonging to some other important contents. Going further, how long could people’s attention be, the answer is 1 to 3 minutes at most. Shocking, isn’t it ?There are several pitfalls of using flash things as important components:

1) SEO issues: google cann’t index the flash as good as normal ones, that is truth, at least until now it is that.

2) Flash player is another issue: nobody could say that every brower is campatible with the flash? The answer is NO.

 3) Some flash effects are not compatible. Like the effect showed in the picture above, it is some kind simulation of Mac’s Dock. What is it used for? Just show that it’s cool, funny or efficient? Neither, i think. 

In my opinion, just like the picture demonstrated below, clear, simple and accessable navigator plus inspirative design would be useful and helpful to all browsers.