Flash Over Substance

“Flash over substance” has a double meaning when it comes to usability concerns designers face when they put together a new site. Whenever I hear the word Flash, I cringe, because all I can think about are the many, many hours I spent developing in Flash through high school and my undergraduate years. I started with Flash 4, when Adobe Flash was Macromedia Flash and “splash” intros were all-that-jazz. Back then wasn’t exactly the “wild wild west” (that would be the 80’s, right?)—it was 1999, and Flash gave me the capability to break out of the fundamentally “box-based” approach to designing on the web.

Nowadays, there are few reasons to use Flash. The least legitimate reason, I think, is to “spice up” the design of a site. Usually, spicing it up with Flash comes at the cost of functionality and accessibility. And what’s more, the people who are usually asking for Flash developers to spice up their sites have no idea what Flash is capable of other than fancy animations.

When marketing is the sole purpose of a website, however, Flash is great for delivering jaw-dropping effects that aren’t possible through HTML/CSS or Javascript. Hollywood and video game companies consistently use Flash for exactly this purpose, and I think they do it well. Their sites aren’t overly complex, there is little information to convey, and they’re out to sell a single product. These sites swear by the mantra “Flash over substance” because their substance is their product, and they don’t need to sell you on anything else. The promotional website for Square-Enix’s Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (a Japanese PSP game) and The Golden Compass movie website are good examples—both sites exist to visually stimulate and entertain you.

Crisis Core

The Golden Compass

The most legitimate reason for using Flash, on the other hand, would be to supplement a site with additional content through plug-in applications like video players. Flash applications can deliver functionality that not only smoothly integrates into an existing site but makes certain forms of dynamic interaction with the site possible. The rule of thumb, I think, is that if you can’t do what you want to do through HTML/CSS, Javascript, or Ajax (easily or reasonably well) then and only then should you turn to Flash as a viable alternative.