Hey guys,

Last week while I was on my friends iPad I pulled up a web site that I had created and it got me thinking about the role that Flash will continue to play in the world of web development, but also about how it should be used responsibly. As you know Apple don't like Flash, so it won't show up when your web sites are viewed using their products. As the number of ppl using Apple continues to grow, the importance of creating a non-Flash friendly web site will become more and more important in the web development world.

I recently re-designed a web site for a building contractor whose initial hire had built his site ENTIRELY out of flash. This is a bad idea not only because some computers don't have flash (even some PCs don't have flash installed), but also because an all-Flash web site loads slowly and is complicated to use. This client was MORTIFIED when he saw what his initial hire had put together, as even he couldn't figure out how to navigate the site!

One option for creating a non-Flash friendly site is to embed a code into your index page that loads a different, non-Flash version, of your site when it senses that the browser doesn't have Flash installed/enabled; but this means creating your web site twice, a lot of work. I employ a different strategy. Embed your Flash elements into your page in such a way that they compliment your site, but are not essential to the function or design of your site.

What this means, for me, is that the Flash animation should not take up more than one quarter of the first screen people see when they visit your site. Important: I didn't say one quarter of the page, it's one quarter of the screen. Given the many different screen resolutions that exist, there is no way to pinpoint the exact dimensions of 1/4 of the screen, but you can get pretty close by making your decisions based on the most commonly used screen resolutions (today most users are using a screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels or higher, with a color depth of at least 65K). You can see more at this link:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

The reason you don't want the animation taking up more than 1/4 of the screen is, that way if the animation doesn't show up, it won't be missed too much. Most designs are not "broken" by a 1/4 page of free space (in fact it actually compliments many designs by letting the page "breath" a little).

Another rule for Flash is that, obviously, the background needs to be transparent. That way if the user's computer doesn't have Flash, they'll just see a little more of the background, instead of a white box that says "plugin missing".... UGLY! (CC Flash Firestarter will allow you to create animations with transparent backgrounds.)

And obviously you don't want ANY part of the function of your site to rely on Flash, otherwise you are basically telling all of your Apple users that the information you're providing isn't for them. And of course there is also the small percentage of PC users who don't have Flash installed either because they are technologically illiterate and don't know how to install it, or they simply don't want it for reasons related to computer speed, etc.

Take my own company's web site, http://www.sprucepinedesign.com, for example. You notice that the Flash animation takes up a nominal amount of space in an area of the web site that doesn't rely on content to look nice. If you dis-able Flash in your browser and pull the site up again, you just see the nice blue sky background instead of the animation, and you'll not even know that something was ever supposed to be there.

I have seen some amazing all flash websites. But I agree that site owners should be forewarned that the site will be inaccessible to Apple mobile devices. Good tips over all.

That was a good article, Chad.

Is it really so that no Apple computers have flash? I thought it was only the iPad and iPhone, but maybe I'm wrong....

Apple computers can use Flash just fine. Only the iPhone and iPad cannot.

Inger please forgive me for not being more xplicit, I said "Apple products" don't like Flash, but I should have been more specific, "Apple mobile devices don't like Flash", nonetheless, the mobile devices are gaining users by the truckload, especially now that Verizon started offering the iPhone just last month. As I mentioned in the article, I really am thinking towards what the future holds for Flash. At the present moment one can EASILY say the majority of internet devices are Flash enabled.

Just because Apple has decided to throw out Flash (from their stand point for good reasons) doesn't mean you should. It does mean that you might need to reconsider how and when you use it. Does anyone remember the good old days when Marc A. (the father of Netscape/Mozsiac/Mozilla) and his nerdy friends where emailing back and forth about improvements to SGML back before HTML? I seem to remember him wanting a way to display graphic files in-content, frustrated that mime didn't work for that purpose yet, and proposing using an <img> tag.

Scott probably remembers this better than me but somebody actually mentioned that it wasn't necessary because Adobe was working on a Postscript project (you are probably more familiar with its current name PDF). Today, we have Marc's <img> tag albeit a little different than his initial proposal, and PDF's. And we use them both when appropriate.

What I'm trying to say is guessing what the future holds is a little silly. I have dabbled in coding since 1984. I didn't create an HTML document with a graphic in it until 1999, because I couldn't imagine any entity besides the military, colleges, and big companies ever wanting or paying for broadband. Today, I make my living coding websites, and very rarely code a console app.

I'm still a little amazed that mobile devices like cell phones and PDA's (is that term even used anymore) offer full support for HTML (anyone remember WAP, BREW, etc.?). Adobe is a great company that has a great deal invested in Flash, I'm sure they are working very hard to protect their market share. Historically, Adobe has always come out on top of Apple when they disagree. But then again I thought that a dial-up connection to a BBS was the future and HTML was for pinheaded intellectuals, so don't rely on my fortune telling skills.

Everything is a tool in your bag of tricks and has a place. Flash content on small touchscreens like Windows Mobile devices isn't really worth much of the time. I still recommend coding mobile device site and a desktop site, and it is still good practice to write your code so that it looks nice even on a monochrome terminal that doesn't support graphics (just in case).

Couldn't agree more Levi! Though I disagree that it's "silly" to try and anticipate/plan for the future.

Has anyone here tried telling a client to use some alternative to flash? Good luck with that. If there is a secret let me in on it, please!!!!

The only thing I have been able to come up with is to inflate the price of my flash services.

W3C awhile back tried to anticipate/plan for the future by abandoning HTML and giving us XHTML. I read an estimate that less than 1% of sites implemented it. And now XHTML has been shelved and we have HTML5 and CSS3. I don't mind XHTML but in retrospect becoming competent appears to have been (maybe "silly" is a bit harsh) a futile exercise.

And to Philoshopher, I have never been good at telling customers anything (whenever I do they usually take their business and $$ to someone else). I have limited success in asking if they want to target users of mobile device like iPhone, etc. Most clients are all for that, they really believe that is where the future of the internet lies (particularly retail, hospitality, & food service). I then mention that Flash content isn't supported by most mobile device browsers. Some come back in a few days or weeks and inform me, "Did you know Flash doesn't work on the iPhone? We don't want Flash content on our site(s)."

Translation = They want what CC Firestarter can't do. LOL.