Posted by Jose on 01/04/49 11:36

Bald Pup asks..
> Are there any cogent arguments against the use of Flash?

1: Flash is used primarily by advertisers to steal your attention away
from the content the user came to see.

2: Flash cannot be turned off at the browser preferences level, like
animations, graphics, sound, java, scripts, and other stuff can be.
True, there are workarounds with additional software, but that's not the
point.

3: Flash is free to the user - Macromedia makes its money from flash
content creators, which are largely the advertisers mentioned above.
Therefore it will probably always be the case that flash is not
defeatable, since that's the way advertisers want it.

4: Flash content is large. Large content is discouraged on home pages
and anywhere small content would suffice.

5: Flash doesn't resize gracefully. Flash movies and slide shows play
at their own pace, not at the user's pace, unlike text which is read at
the user's pace.

6: Flash is powerful; it can take over (for example) the user's
microphone. Flash will be upgraded and there may be illicit uses for
this ability. I am not all that confident that other such abilities
will be introduced, should advertisers want it. Can you say "Sony"?

7: Flash is ubiquitous and getting more so. This is a very bad trend
which should be impeded, mainly because of (1) and (2) above.

8: Most flash content I've seen is lame, and not worth the time,
bandwidth, or effort. Ask yourself very critically whether your message
or information is really =really= enhanced by being presented in this
manner.

There are other reasons, this is just a start.

There are occasionally good reasons for a flash presentation, but it
should NEVER NEVER be on the home page, and the user should be warned
that it is a flash presentation before they click the link.

Alan J. Flavell says...
> If there was a way of getting a prompt and being able to say "no
> thanks" to the browser when unsolicited flash content was offered, I
> might be willing to re-enable it. I haven't found an option like that
> yet.

In Windows, For IE, rename the flash.ocx file everywher it appears
(earlier versions used swflash.ocx). To re-enable it, re-rename one
instance of the file back to its original name. For Netscape the file
is less obvious - it's npswf32.dll (in the plugins folder).

Jose
(a.r.kibology, r.s.pro-wrestling removed)
--
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