Slashdot

Many Slashdotters who hate Macromedia Flash MX offer reasons that are obsolete or unfounded. In any Flash-related topic there's always some antiquarian who says, "Flash doesn't support the back button, search engines, Unicode, or Section 508 accessibility for the disabled." Or they're unaware that Flash .SWF is now an open format with many non-Macromedia authoring tools available. (Watch out for that last link if you're running Mozilla; the site crashed my browser. But that wasn't Flash's fault!)

These posters apparently read Jakob Nielsen's October 2000 article "Flash: 99% Bad" and imprinted on it like baby ducks. They never read his June 2002 update, boldly titled "Flash Now Improved" (scroll to the bottom of the linked page).

And I hear other bogus reasons. I wrote this rebuttal so I'd have a handy summary the next time a Slashdotter trots out the same tired arguments:

• "Flash is just vector animation, and the Web isn't about animation."

  Obsolete. Animation is increasingly irrelevant to Flash's new purposes -- Macromedia calls these purposes "Rich Internet Applications". Flash MX supports XML, Web services, RSS feeds, and video. You can run shopping carts, hotel reservation services, blogs, text editors, address books, and realtime PowerPoint-style presentations through the Flash client. The Data Connection Kit lets Flash talk seamlessly to databases and application servers.

• "SVG is better and more flexible than Flash, and it's free (as in speech)."

  And it's a 2.8MB plug-in when the free (as in beer) Flash Player is under 600K. That's still an issue for the two-thirds of Internet users who don't have broadband access. SVG is also specifically about vector graphic animation, and Flash now has much higher aspirations (see above). Really, they're complementary technologies; both have their uses. But just as a reality check, SVG isn't a fraction as widely supported in modern browsers as is Flash, and the gap is widening, not narrowing.

• "Flash doesn't have a Linux player."

  The sin of sins. But incorrect.

• "Flash isn't on every platform."

  The Flash Player is the world's most widely-distributed software, with well over half a billion copies around. As shown in the book Flash Enabled, there are Flash players for every modern Web browser (except text-only Lynx), for Pocket PCs, and for various cellphones, with more versions of the Player available all the time.

• "Flash is insecure."

  I searched Security Focus for "Macromedia Flash" and got 32 hits. Check them out. For a program as venerable and widespread as Flash, it's not a bad list. Macromedia has been good about acknowledging and correcting bugs promptly.

• "Flash encourages bad design."

  This was Jakob Nielsen's main point back in October 2000: If you have Flash, he says, an overwhelming urge compels you to create obnoxious intros, gratuitous animations, and weird and limiting user controls. Worst of all, he says, you're diverted from providing frequent updates and updating your content. Since Flash MX appeared, and with it a standard set of user components, he's tempered his dislike. (But if you still feel possessed in that way, maybe you should spend $64 for Nielsen's November 2002 188-page .PDF report, Flash Usability: Design Guidelines for Web-Based Functionality, Tools, and Applications. I haven't.)

  Flash is a tool. Clueless and tasteless designers abuse it as they abuse any tools. What, you've never seen ugly HTML or stylesheets?

• "Flash is proprietary software, and proprietary software is evil."

  Yeah, well, whatever. I saw this view nicely expressed by Pete Hughes: "An open source Titanic is better than a closed source clipper." Write me when you reach Utopia.

More rebuttal to follow as I hear more reasons.