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With all the backlash against the iPad and it’s lack of Flash support I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the proper use of Flash on the web.First, and foremost, you should never develop an entire website using Flash with no HTML alternative. This is bad form, not only because devices like the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad cannot access this content, but also for users with accessibility issues. Rarely are Flash websites built with accessibility in mind. This means that users with eyesight, hearing or other physical disabilities will have limited access to or be unable to use your website at all.

Most properly coded HTML websites are completely accessible for users with disabilities.

Another disadvantage to a complete Flash website is the lack of search engine indexable content. When you have a website completely built in Flash, all the copy and content is inside that Flash file which is invisible to search engines. For example, the website for the Grindhouse double feature is completely unavailable if Flash is disabled. No alternate content is available and no indexable content is present. Most movie, band and restaurant websites suffer from this problem.

Unfortunately these are the kind of sites you would want to visit on your mobile device when you are out on the town.

Flash should be relegated to small features on your site that can enhance the overall browsing experience, but are not essential. Your site should not break if Flash is not installed and you should have HTML alternatives to prominent Flash content. For example, the entire front navigation for themacstore.com is Flash.

For users who come to the site without Flash installed or without javascript turned on, the Flash is replaced with a static JPG image map. This was done with some javascript called SWFObject.

Solutions to the Flash Dilemma

SWFObject

SWFObject is javascript that will replace elements on the page with specified Flash files. SWFObject uses javascript to check if Flash is installed and, if it is, it will replace a specific DIV with the proper Flash file. Not only does this make your site more accessible, but it also helps with your site’s search engine index-ability. The beauty of this solution is that you get all the functionality and indexable content of an HTML site with the pizzazz of a Flash site.

HTML5

There has been a lot of talk about HTML5 in all this iPad non-Flash discussion. Most of this is surrounding video on the web. The way HTML5 handles video is much more elegant than Flash and there are no plug-ins needed. One example of this is SublimeVideo. It offers features like custom styled controls, full-window mode and iPhone & iPad support. The SublimeVideo player is still in development, but it looks very promising.

Right now the only browsers with HTML5 support include the most recent versions of Firefox, Safari and Chrome. IE is still lagging in this respect. So with this in mind, HTML5 support across the board is not quite here yet.

Outside of video, I’m not sure that HTML5 can replace Flash for the extremely interactive sites that some companies desire. So I believe Flash will always have it’s place on the web, for a while.

At some point, we may think of Flash content the same way we now think of the old <blink> tag. Outdated, useless and completely annoying.