Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
Why do you dislike Flash for menus?
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Flash has many interesting uses where it can be utilized to enhance user experience, but *basic navigation of sites* is not one of those uses.
- not all the people have Flash installed on their machines. There are Linux and FreeBSD users, there are various phones, net appliances, there are people working at government institutions or large corporations that are not allowed to install flash.
- even if user does have Flash installed he might not have the latest and greatest version. He might be using an obsolete system with limited resources for example
- even if user does have Flash installed and has appropriate version he might opt to have a "noscript" of "flashblock" plugins switched on in order to avoid all those atrocious jumping, popping, flashing (pun intended), bloody advertisements
- there are users that can not see properly and they need to use screen readers or other tools to be able to access the net. Even a simple zoom tool can render that beautiful flash menu almost unusable for visually impaired visitor
- there are users that live in regions where the only Internet connection is modem or other very expensive and/or slow medium. Flash files are usually magnitude bigger than a simple menu implemented in HTML. Just imagine what will heavy use of bloated flash animations do to the already overloaded AT&T mobile connection in USA. (I am looking at you, iPhone users)
- You can not save flash page. You can not copy and paste a phone number or an address from a flash animation (well, *you* might be able to use some hack to save animation but my mom or my wife or Joe SixPack are not able to do that)
- flash menus often do not work properly on certain combination of browser / operating system / plugin version or when you use magnification on the page (Ctrl and Plus sign on numerical keyboard in Firefox). There are big name sites where the menu appears under the graphics on the page. Even on this Windows XP computer with Firefox browser. Like Sonystyle.com for example.
- The users are IMPATIENT. I am impatient. When I visit a site I usually want to get some info. And when I do not find what I want quickly I look for another site that might have the info. I do not usually visit sites to marvel at complicated menu animations or look at "loading menu..." or even worse "loading intro ..." prompt. And if you include some nice music into your intro, I might never ever come back ...