Virgin America ditches Flash on its site | Hacker News Reader

Virgin America ditches Flash on its site

macworld.com

97 pointsilamont18 comments

Quite Frankly Virgin America's website probably never should have been using flash in the first place. It wasn't adding value in this case. (I'm pro flash in the right context, this wasn't one of them)

Definitely. I love Flash, but Virgin America's use of it was very obtrusive and made no sense.

Most non-game use of Flash is obtrusive and makes no sense...

Flash still makes sense for RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) as well. There are admittedly few of them out there though.

Its funny Jquery really came out of nowhere, and 90% of the time I can grab a plugin and not even need to write flash.

That's the key.

I don't mind a flash app that adds optional functionality (like an auto mfg having a slick rotating view of the inside of their cars), but I absolutely hate having basic functionality buried in flash (what models do they offer, how much horsepower do they have, and how much do they cost.)

While it's great to see this stuff get more exposure, I'm kind of tired of seeing it framed as an Apple vs Adobe battle instead of just people with taste vs Adobe. You don't have to have an iPhone to want a site that works well without that horrible plugin.

Their interactive route map still requires Flash:

http://www.virginamerica.com/va/travelInfo.do?pageName=route...

obviously this is still very fresh.. try cntrl+click on the slideshow on the home page...

good catch!

Good for them. Flash has its uses but I feel like at some point in the last 2 or 3 years web developers for many sites realized that writing something in Flash offered better job security and more billable hours than using plain ole' web standards. The other day I went to a site that used Flash for a store locator page and after you filled out the form, in Flash, it simply went to a new HTML page with an embedded HTML map quest object. There was absolutely no reason for this to be in Flash.

Doubtful. jQuery, CSS, HTML, JS or Flash? Flash is quicker development time hands down.

that's a broad brush, in many cases i would absolutely disagree. really depends on what you building and how well you are building it, particularly when you want flash to work with old plugin version and on mobile devices. and maintaining flash can be a royal pain in the ass, certainly can't just ssh in to the server and poke around with your images and code on a flash site.

but yeah you can bang out some fancy stuff pretty fast in flash.

While a lot of media outlets have been playing this up as some sort of tech holy war, it really comes down to the conversions and compatibility. Build a nice standardized site, and you can cut some (but not all) costs when trying to reach out for mobile users. Virgin's not taking sides, they're trying to make a profit.

What's amazing is that this is a news story at all. "Websites uses open standards, like most other web sites".

Why did they do it?

From the CTO: "Flash eliminates iPhone users."

Point to Apple.

Point to all mobiles - Flash sucks up CPU badly enough on desktops, there is as of yet no implementation of Flash I'd consider good on any mobile platform.

Adobe should have had a class action lawsuit filed against it for the amount of daily mass suffering it has caused with flash.

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