Flash avoidance

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 20 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

Brent Simmons says, "I don’t miss Flash in the least tiny bit." He deleted Flash from his system and discovered that he really doesn’t need it.

I’ve been using the Proxomitron to disable Flash (among other things) for about two years. The number of people that are removing or disabling Flash is growing.

If you are using Flash when building your site, remember that not everyone has Flash installed. Make sure to provide non-Flash content. A number of sites use Flash navigation. That’s just plain dumb. Anyone who visits your site without Flash won’t be able to get past your home page.

If you still use a Flash splash screen, remove it. Splash screens are obnoxious. They make people pass a hurdle to get to your site. If someone wants to visit your site why slow them down with a useless screen?

If you still insist on using a splash screen, make sure that the "Skip Intro" link is in text, not Flash. That way people who don’t have flash will still be able to click through to your main site.

Ry
October 29, 2002 6:21 PM

Why is it that as the bandwidth available to people has become greater, people are becoming more and more concerned about optimizing their pages for fast loading? This seems so counter intuitive. I guessed 5 years ago that by the mid-part of this decade we would be past the textual side of the Internet, that we would be using the Internet not as a world of words but of images and sounds--like the TV. I doesn't look like that will happen and the reason why might be that people don't--as much as they sit and stare at them--like their TVs as much they assume they do. It seems the information filled world of online-newspapers, blogs, and community is much more desired force than being spood fed TV-content like Flash movies and other non-essential elements like Animated GIFs and background MIDIs.

Adam Kalsey
October 29, 2002 7:46 PM

As the Internet grew in popularity, pundits tried to understand it by forcing the net into the mental models they understood. Since consumers viewed the Web through glowing color screens, prognosticators saw the future of the Internet as being interactive TV. These futurists didn't understand one thing. If the Web is TV, then why would we need both?

tired
December 8, 2003 7:37 AM

Let me guess, you are an unemployed flash designer

This discussion has been closed.

Recently Written

The Trap of The Sales-Led Product (Dec 10)
It’s not a winning way to build a product company.
The Hidden Cost of Custom Customer Features (Dec 7)
One-off features will cost you more than you think and make your customers unhappy.
Domain expertise in Product Management (Nov 16)
When you're hiring software product managers, hire for product management skills. Looking for domain experts will reduce the pool of people you can hire and might just be worse for your product.
Strategy Means Saying No (Oct 27)
An oft-overlooked aspect of strategy is to define what you are not doing. There are lots of adjacent problems you can attack. Strategy means defining which ones you will ignore.
Understanding vision, strategy, and execution (Oct 24)
Vision is what you're trying to do. Strategy is broad strokes on how you'll get there. Execution is the tasks you complete to complete the strategy.
How to advance your Product Market Fit KPI (Oct 21)
Finding the gaps in your product that will unlock the next round of growth.
Developer Relations as Developer Success (Oct 19)
Outreach, marketing, and developer evangelism are a part of Developer Relations. But the companies that are most successful with developers spend most of their time on something else.
Developer Experience Principle 6: Easy to Maintain (Oct 17)
Keeping your product Easy to Maintain will improve the lives of your team and your customers. It will help keep your docs up to date. Your SDKs and APIs will be released in sync. Your tooling and overall experience will shine.

Older...

What I'm Reading

Contact

Adam Kalsey

+1 916 600 2497

Resume

Public Key

© 1999-2023 Adam Kalsey.