As you all have heard by now Adobe and Apple don’t seem to be playing well together in the sandbox. As a matter of fact Mr. Jobs has effectively kicked sand in the face of Adobe by excluding Flash-to-iPhone apps- a feature exclusive to Flash CS5. Does this mean the death of Flash?

Flash will still be around. Just like ColdFusion is still around. But like ColdFusion, Flash will be used a lot more sparingly. And there is good reason for that.

Guilt by Association

I’ve used Flash for about decade now. It’s great for games. There isn’t much out there that can compete with it as an online gaming platform. But Flash has really done itself a disservice by making the barrier to entry so low that many a Flash site is poorly executed. There is a reason that you pay good money for good Flash development. Because it is so easy to do badly.

Unfortunately the number of poorly executed Flash interactivity far outweighs the good ones. And with the advent of HTML5 and JQuery it makes it harder to justify its use for many things.

The Issues

• Flash for Flash Sake- Most people like to see things moving across their screens. Big photos, video, and sound can make for an immersive campaign or dynamic homepage but once the gimmick of it has worn off it becomes pretty annoying. It’s these types of uses of Flash that give it a bad reputation. What are good uses of Flash? Like I said earlier, games are great uses. But infographics and timelines can be done well in Flash also. However using Flash just to make something move around the screen is not the reason to use it.
• Plug-In Dependent- The web browsing experience is moving further away from plug-ins and relying more on its built-in capabilities and web standards. HTML5 support in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are great examples of what is to come. It’s incredibily irritating to browse the Web and discover that you have to update your Flash plug-in to see the entire site or a large part of its key functionality. It’s just a bad experience.
• Mobile, Mobile, Everywhere- More and more people are browsing the Web on their mobile devices. And the major devices (iPhone and iPad) don’t support Flash. With more than 350,000 iPads purchased within the first week of release you have to pay attention.

A Real World Example

Yesterday I ordered a pizza from dominospizza.com via my iPad. I was able access the homepage, select my combination type, and then… I got this message “Your browser does not support Flash. So you won’t be able to see your pizza being built.” OK, I’m ordering the pizza online for delivery why would I need to SEE the pizza being made? I don’t see it being made at my favorite pizzeria in town anyway.

Although I was able to order my pizza without Flash it was a classic example of Flash for Flash sake. Imagine a user who jumped to the conclusion that they cannot complete their purchase without Flash. Is a lost transaction worth an interactive pizza animation?

I believe last week marked the time for less Flash and more attention on mobile, standards-based design and coding. Flash won’t die but its use will begin to diminish.

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