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Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

User Experience

Flash Navigation

2 Oct 2003

Flash has its uses, but creating the primary navigation for site and having no alternate navigation isn’t one of them. As with any tool, you should think carefully about whether Flash is the right tool for your application. In the example cited, there is no reason at all the navigation needs to be in Flash. The exact same effect could be easily created with rollover graphics or even styled text.

And if for some reason the navigation did need to be in Flash, the text links at the bottom of the page should contain duplicate links for all of the Flash-based navigation items. Think of any links within Flash movies as an imagemap. Just like it’s a good idea to provide alternate text links for anything in an imagemap, you should do the same with Flash.

Why is this important? Think of all the people who can’t use this bank’s site. Blind people with screen readers, text only browsers, PDA browsers, people without Flash installed, people behind proxy servers that strip Flash content, and more.

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