Rant on all-Flash websites

Perhaps I'm oldfashioned or I've spent too much time on www.webpagesthatsuck.com, but to me, the web is a hypertext medium. HyperTEXT. Flash is a graphical medium.

A website consists of content, navigation, and layout. The purpose of the navigation and layout is to allow visitors to get the content. The content is not there as an excuse to show off your l33t layout "designer" skillzz. (In true design, form follows function - ideally the user will not even notice that there IS a design. Amazon, ebay or livejournal are successful because they don't force visitors to chase wandering stars with their mouse.)

There are many good technical reasons not to make a Flash-only website, such as that the content is invisible to searchbots, inaccessible to those without the right version plugin, loads slowly, etc. But what I dislike most about the full-flash website is the motive behind it, which is to coerce the visitor into being subjected to the "experience" in order to get at the content. You have a slow connection? Well you'll have to load the entire flash file anyway! You don't want to hear my awful background music? Cover your ears! You can't read the small type I used in my awesome colour scheme of puke-on-dirt? Well screw you! You want to find something on my site? You'll just have to sit back and watch the same stupid 10-second animation every time you click a link. Oh and of course I forgot to enable print or copy-paste, so if you want the program for this festival event, you'd better grab a paper and pencil!

Flash is wonderful if you make an animated movie or a game or some artsy "thing" where the presentation *is* the content, but to use it instead of plain html just because you can't stomach the thought that a visually disabled visitor might crank up the font size beyond what fits in your carefully frontpaged layout is the Devil's invention. In my opinion.

back to sequential art.

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