Why I hate Flash | Hacker News Reader

Why I hate Flash

haineault.com

39 pointsmuriithi43 comments

Why I hate Flash: outside of youtube, 95% of all Flash content is just advertisement - including flashy corporate home pages. Very little actually affords any utility to me.

Flashblock is by far the most valuable Firefox extension that I use.

In that case, you should actually like Flash. Several commenters here say that standard, open technologies like Javascript should be used instead, because they can do everything Flash can do. But if that happened, all the annoying stuff that is currently in Flash would simply be ported to Javascript. And it is much more inconvenient to block Javascript than it is to block Flash.

What we have now is an almost ideal situation: Much of the stupidest stuff on the web is in Flash, little of the important stuff needs Flash, and Flash is easy to block.

True enough. Though if it weren't for Flashblock, it would be a whole different situation. (I'm often surprised to find out how much I'm "missing" when forced to use IE)

Yea... think of anybody trying to create a new web-enabled hardware. In addition of getting a browser working right, they would be at Adobe's mercy for providing a flash plug in for it. Now imagine if Silverlight becomes hot together with JavaFX. How many private corporate interests will you have to deal with to support your platform then? Because you'll need A LOT of runtime support to be a useful web surfing tool. Yet another obstacle towards truly mobile web.

Flash, Silverlight, and other proprietary "extenders" all need to be replaced with extended standard CSS/JS/XML solution, supported by all browsers out of the box.

No kidding. You should see what i went through trying to get flash on ppc & amd64 linux

hey silverlight is actually pretty cool. at least, i don't need a $600 program to develop for it

You don't need a $600 program to develop flash either. osflash.org has one alternative ide and there are a few others.

ah, cool. i was under the impression flash has always been closed

They released the details of Flash with the condition you couldn't create clients. So the Flash clients are all Adobe, but you can write software to create Flash stuff.

Out of the dozens of IDE's listed here, what's your recommendation?

I can't give an honest recommendation since I use Adobes software. But I've heard flashdevelop.org is pretty nice.

OpenLaszlo can create rich internet applications in its own LZX format, which can compile down to Flash or DHTML. Cool stuff.

I am so sick of flash haters. Flash, like anything else can be used to create a horrible site. But it can create some kick-ass sites as well.

I disagree with half of the column.

I use swfadress and index not only my pages in google but my assets. also each can have a seperate url for bookmarking.

You can copy and past any text on a flash site, if the designer wants you to. its as simple as pressing a button when designing the site.

If you want to hate flash for a few badly designed sites, answer these questions:

How many times have you had to hack css or html to work cross browser?

Bad design ---> sparkles following your mouse!!!

i can pick on anything that i disagree with, but flash is popular because it works, is eye catching and small.

Flash's main problem is being easy enough for a novice to pick up and create a garbage site.

>>Flash's main problem is being easy enough for a novice to pick up and create a garbage site.

So is plain HTML, but if someone creates a crappy site in HTML, at least I don't need a proprietary codec to view it. It works in any browser, will deliver everything an informative site needs to, and won't take 5 minutes for it to load.

Flash violates the K.I.S.S. design principle by being unnecessary in 90% of use-cases.

who's to say whats unnecessary?

There are many valid reasons to use flash. Flash has proven itself the best tool in creating animation of many sorts for lightweight delivery over the web.

You dont HAVE to use flash for anything. But there are MANY cases where it is the best option.

although i have to say, I would prefer a standardized codec similar to flash. Aside from big corporation, I think flash is an awesome product, although inappropriate in some places. I don't think its bad across the board though. I can use an swf vector image thats 350b as opposed to a png of the same size thats 15K. Even with the Flash VM loading it is quite efficient if one is a good designer.

You are sick of flash haters, flash haters are sick of you. And people who simple don't use or like flash -- like me -- choose to live on the side of the web where we can read the information we want and move on. We can even use the web without a full blown gui, and it works just fine.

There's clearly demand for people who use the web for playing games, watching movies, etc. Anyhow, you have to understand that there's people who's on the web for the information. That kind of people will be annoyed by poping flash screens messing up their reading experience.

Try delivering this "information" in text:

http://www.lecoqsportif.com/#/us/all/

who wants to use the web without a GUI? how many ppl want an experience like that? Maybe diehard code nerds like a few of us, but we are a extremely small minority in the sea of web users.

"Last fall, I quoted on a website contract for our city college"

You don't have to read past that first sentence to realize that this is heavily biased opinion from a person who earns his living doing web design. Many of the issues are completely independent of whether or not flash is used -- like improperly configured domains, accessibility, background music, rest interfaces. With a little creativity you can solve most of the issues on that site.

"You don't have to read past that first sentence to realize that this is heavily biased opinion from a person who earns his living doing web design."

Absolutely! Really, who could be less qualified to comment on web design?

I'm not the grammar-nazi type, but I have this problem where when people use the word "literally" I assume they are not being metaphorical.

"it's literally a scrollbar orgy"

Thanks for that image.

Give him some credit, English isn't his first language:

http://haineault.com/about/

One of the comments on that page ("Jeremy") kept going off on how terrible YouTube is: 'Obviously it was forced on them by the giant failure "YouTube".' What is he talking about? I thought YouTube was extremely successful, so much so that Google bought them out?

He was being funny by saying A, but actually meaning B, where A = !B.

Sarcasm might be what it is called. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Or maybe you wanted to be funny as well? Oh the joys of textual communication and vague jokes. :)

The lack of cut and paste annoys me greatly (from the user's perspective when viewing a webpage)

Flash does have 'cut n paste'. Its developer choice to implement it or not.

The article is about why he hate that particular Flash website, not Flash.

Flash is THE best way to deliver heavy weight rich internet applications on web.

With Javascript, you would:

if(ie 5){ //do stuff.. }else if(ie 6){ //do stuff.. }else if(ie 7){ //do stuff.. }else if (IE generic fail edition){ //do stuff.. }else if(Opera){ //do stuff.. }else if(Safari){ //do stuff.. }else { // do stuff }

With Flash you would just "do stuff"..

Now, this doesnt mean Flash is better than Javascript.But when delivering heavy weight RIAs, its better to stick on to Flash.Why overload client side with untargeted code?

You don't do that sort of thing in javascript :) There's a couple of areas where things are different - event handling for example. Either you use a library, or you feature sniff. Certainly not browser sniff.

Flash is pretty slow and inaccessible. I'd bet my money on javascript every time. The only thing missing is video/audio. Which should be there soon afaik.

flash is actually very much like java in the event handling dept. And javascript is changing to adjust to the superior features that flash has. The argument about people just use the web for information is rediculous, as the majority of ppl play online games, share video via youtube, have myspace/facebook and want VISUAL STIMULATION.

As a programmer, sometimes we have to step our of our comfort zone to see how the rest of the world uses the web. The average consumer responds well to many flash sites. This can not be denied from a developer standpoint.

Companies are making millions on those flash ads, and many of us are dying to get the user base so we can attract those tacky ads. Our stance as developers that this technology, which is on 90+% of computers is useless, may need some reevaluation.

Why is this poorly written article getting front page attention? Oh, because the internet reads headlines... forget the important substance or in this case, lack there of.

Who doesn't?

Seriously, flash is only good for two things:

- Embedding movies and animations

- Delivering Internet games

Both of these things can usually be done without flash. Doing anything else with flash does positive harm to the usability of the site. If all your site does is provide information, don't use flash. I shouldn't have to have some proprietary, third-party plugin to read text or view simple images. In the long run, it will be you who loses out.

I shouldn't have to have some proprietary, third-party plugin to read text or view simple images.

Would that make http://www.scribd.com the antithesis to your statement? It solves the problem of viewing documents that would otherwise require a special plugin or application.

No, because he preceded his statement with "If all your site does is provide information." It is fair to assume if you provide information, you can choose the format for providing that information. That is, you don't have to provide PDF's, you can put it straight into the HTML. In fact, that's his entire point. Whether it's a PDF or a Flash file, that's not necessary. It's just text, so it should be rawly embedded into the page.

There is no need for flash just to view a document. Just convert it to an image on the server. I hacked together a script that did this in an afternoon once, so it is doable.

Using flash has some benefits, but it's not impossible without it.

Yeah, totally. Why use a picture when a thousand words will do?

>> I shouldn't have to have some proprietary, third-party plugin to read text or [i]view simple images.[/i]

You don't need flash to view pictures.

I disagree with you at one point. A site that provides information may not want the information to be indexed.

For example, an escort girl's website may just want to show portfolio of pictures to her potential clients, but she will not want Google to index them.

Information is to be consumed by human. Sometime we may just want to keep machines to access it.

That's what robots.txt is for.

But right click on the image and "save the image" beats the robots.txt, too. The in the previous example, this girl just don't want any pictures to be saved by anyone.

I agree, but I hate the idea of delivering movies with flash. There are plenty more flexible options out there. It's much more enjoyable to watch videos on my favorite media player.

I can't read French, it is true and so my ability to evaluate certain aspects of the site are compromised, but as an ad piece I do find it compelling to be honest.

If you are creating a site that has a lot streaming audio or video the embedded player must be flash, just as youtube does! There is no other way in this instance! 99% of net users use flash to enjoy audio and video through their browser.

A entire site in flash... well that does suck!

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