[Gllug] say No to Flash. was -> EZ-Jackster

[Rev Simon Rumble]

On Tue 23 Oct, John Edwards made the following spurious claims:

> One of the big advantages of webpages is the ability to quickly search for 
> information, either through a seach engine or through a wide variety of 
> client tools. Flash breaks that, imagine searching for say "Audi cars" and 
> never finding the Audi site because they used 100% Flash. 

Only stupid people would use 100% Flash.  Sadly there are stacks of
stupid people.  Flash is good for two things: vector graphics like
maps (until SVG is more widespread, anyway) and animation (of which
95% is superfluous but can be really good in instructional design).

> The other is that the data on a webpage is often taken from several other 
> sources, eg databases, and usually dynamically. Can Flash cope with all 
> the possible data sources your company has ? Or if the website is a 
> primary source of data then can you easily extract the data out without 
> propriety tools (if things go belly-up) ?

Macromedia do make a tool that allows for database access for Flash,
called Generator.  But why bother with some proprietary tool when you
can use free tools?

> The disabilities argument is probably the one that will work on managers 
> though.

This is the strongest argument against it.  In fact I had to have a go
at Technical Aid for the Disabled in Australia a while back because
they were using a Java navigation thingy on their web site -- you'd
think they would know better.

It's not just screen readers that have problems with Flash.  The
movies are often small and can't be resized so people with some vision
can't make them larger, which they can do with HTML text.

The disabilities argument ties in well with the common standard one.
With a common standard, people with disabilities are able to work with
what you make.  Equally people with other op[erating systems can see
what you do.  Why bother creating something proprietary which will
alienate some (perhaps only a small part, but significant) of your
audience when it's just as easy to use the standards?  It's not like
Flash is cheap to make!

-- 
Rev Simon Rumble <simon at rumble.net>
www.rumble.net

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