CheeseCare itself does not employ Flash technologies for UI development, the reasons for which are here discussed for the benefit of other web developers and also for the better understanding of clients who insist on using Flash. The most important one is that any information embedded in Flash cannot be detected by most search engines which may prove to be a major drawback for all website owners. This downside of Flash websites has been discussed by various SEO practitioners who have suggested that any textual content encapsulated within a flash object is not accessible to the search engines as text leading to a situation where that text happens to be ignored by search engines. Inspite of many efforts to make flash sites SEO friendly, not much success has yet been achieved as highlighted in this article.
Apart from this major issue, there are many more reasons which urge developers to dump Flash. One of them is that inspite of most computers being Flash equipped owing to the fact that it is distributed with Windows, there are many users who use other web browsers and need to install suitable plug-ins to view flash objects. This does not go down well with most people considering the fact that not only do the users need to use the correct type of plug-in, they are expected to be having the proper version of it as well. This can be frustrating for many viewers who are unable to figure out what to install and may end-up drifting to no-flash sites providing similar information or services. This diversion of traffic away from the website is not desirable to any owner.
Another remarkable point is that the navigation controls of web browsers fail to work within the flash object. The browser history records only one task as viewing the flash object. Whatever the user does within that object is not recorded in the browser history. Also the user cannot navigate backward or forward unless the flash object includes a provision for the navigation controls. For the same reason, users experience problems in bookmarking pages of flash websites. If we bookmark a particular page within the flash object, and later try to open the same, we end up at the homepage of that flash object since the browser is unable to navigate within it. Moreover, any relevant text such as contact information and the like are not available for selecting and copying to a text editor. Apart from this, the user cannot increase text size to enhance readability, as he can in non-flash webpages.
To illustrate this, have a look at the following two websites. The first thumbnail will take you to the website of SAP, which has a flash based UI. You can see for yourself the follies of this technology. Even though it is visually attractive, you cannot copy the text and neither can a search engine access it. The second thumbnail is that of CardsKhelo, a CheeseCare project which does not use flash for the UI, making the text available to search engines unlike the case of SAP. Also, the SAP website does not load until the Flash object is fully downloaded while there is no such issue with CardsKhelo. You can browse to both the pages and observe the disparity for yourself.
Having highlighted the fact that Flash UI’s do suffer from a lot of setbacks, I would like to suggest to novice developers and ignorant clients, who still believe that Flash offers the best functionality and appearance to any website, that we do have alternative technologies that can provide similar grandeur to webpages while rectifying the deficiencies of Flash. We at Cheese use JavaScript libraries and frameworks like jQuery, Prototype and Ext JS as substitutes for Flash. Besides these, there are many more technologies and tools that are available for this purpose, which we are constantly exploring to serve our clients better.
One very important point here is that the argument is only about Flash not being successful with UI development. It still finds use in a wide variety of other tasks vital to web development. I would like to acknowledge the unsurpassed capability of flash for streaming videos, which amounts to saying that YouTube would probably not exist without Flash. So it is all about using the right tool for the right job.
