A long time ago, when the internet was young, and stupid, the early web designers ventured outside the realm of HTML to find ways to make sites easier on the eyes. After all, the majority of websites consisted of either simple text, or a collage of images, making the entire web designing process less than glamorous. Enter Flash.

Origin

Flash originated circa 1997, after developers saw the potential in a vector based animation program. You can’t blame the creators for wanting to create a lightweight tool used to display animations in an internet where you were lucky to get colored text. However, immediately after its release, things started to get out of control. The more artsy designers started questioning the standard web production process. They became what I like to call flash addicts.

The Addiction

Addiction to flash happens in a standard, four step process. The majority of the time addiction begins through menu building. The designer realizes his menus are plain and boring, and decides he wants to add some sliding effects. At this point, he has two options. He can try using JavaScript, which would involve some programming, or he can use Flash to quickly put together a fairly exciting menu. Guess which method is chosen 99% of the time? Now, I don’t blame non-programmers for trying to avoid coding like the plague, but the learning curve for JavaScript isn’t steep at all, and with libraries such as JQuery available these days, there is no reason designers shouldn’t at least try to use JavaScript. Once the designer creates a Flash based menu, realizes how easy it was to do, and how nice it looks, step one is complete. The addiction has begun.

Step Two

Only moments after step one, the designer asks himself questions like: “Why limit myself to expanding menus?”, “Why should my content be static?”, “Why don’t I try adding more effects?” Suddenly, to the designer, the possibilities seem endless. Addiction quickly worsens into a state of chaos, and sooner than later, the designer has transformed the entire site into a Flash concoction (note to self: use this word more often.) Once the entire site is Flash based, step two is complete.

Step Three

Suddenly, the designer realizes that his website is complete. He knows he has saturated the site with jumping, sliding, fading, hiding, expanding, and warping effects. He knows he can add no more to the site. But he wonders, “I’ve learned so much, I should put my Flash skills to use.” Thus, the Flash introduction is forged. The Flash introduction is a pastiche of the flashiest effects, the most artistic fonts, and the most new-age music that can be found on the web. But does it serve a purpose? No. The designer has forgotten: websites are means to an end. Step three is complete.

Lessons

At this point, the three major steps of Flash addiction are complete, but one last minor step remains. After the designer sees his introduction, while listening to the new-age music, he has an epiphany. The new-age music is so relaxing, and makes browsing the site so hip, he should extend it beyond the introduction. A couple of hours later, the entire site has music playing in the background, possibly even with a track selector. Step four is complete.

We can learn plenty from these observations. I’ll get the most important lesson to be learned out of the way first. Websites should NEVER have background music. Even if it’s a music-related site, describing your favorite band, there shouldn’t be a MIDI playing in the background. Of course, if you’re an artist, and you want to offer your songs online, a page with all your music, along with play buttons, is perfectly reasonable. Designers seem to forget that people have varying tastes in music.

Second lesson: a website is a container that holds information. It’s not a video. Some might argue that a video is a container that holds information too. To those people: the equivalent of Flash for a book would be filming each page and adding an explosion, or other special effect in between each page turn. Then packing the entire video into a DVD, and selling it besides the original book at Barnes & Noble; marking the book with “HTML only”, of course.

No One Likes an Introduction

Final lesson: introductions are a waste of time. No one likes them. No seriously, 80% of people dislike Flash introductions. So it’s time to put away all the Flash tools and spend more time adding good content to the site. If you think people like your introductions, put a counter on your “skip intro” link, and see how well your introduction fares.

Good Flash, Bad Flash

A good way to conclude this article is to answer an important question. Is Flash ever okay? The answer is yes, Flash can be both, useful and necessary in some cases. Flash video, as used in YouTube, is a godsend. Prior to sites like YouTube, video was played through QuickTime, which should have its own article, Windows Media Player, or RealPlayer, which is so terrible and intrusive, it doesn’t even deserve a critical article. However, other than for video, Flash should remain a tool used to create online games and simple animations. Period.