Flash off!

For the most part I loath web sites that use Flash technology to the exclusion of all others. Flash sites are to me as TV is to radio - using the same transport technology (RF radiation) but sending a completely different content. Sure they both work but really I don't like flash for communicating anything other than purely visual works or art - animation, short movies, games etc. If you want to sell me something, tell me about your product or do anything else that is not purely visual then please, just use HTML and all that other good W3C stuff out there.

Apart from the fact that Flash is proprietary, it also doesn't play well with others. The fact that most search engines can't suck information from Flash sites is just one example, Google among others has to get Flash designers to bend over backwards to index such sites. Now think about what a blind person or any other person with accessibility problems will make of the latest flashy flash site? Until now blind people have probably benefited from use of Flash by advertisers, they are most likely blissfully unaware of such "flashverts" littering their screens. But now what if the entire site is now invisible to them? Its hard enough to get HTML web site designers to do simple stuff like put ALT attributes on their images, switching to Flash as a primary means of communicating on the web is just rubbing salt in the wound.

As one irrate museum curator said to me in Paris when I got out my camera in front of an old master: Pas des flash!