The on-going argument about Flash on the iPod, iPhone and newly launched iPad, still raging and the spat between Apple and Adobe very much still out in the public, it is clear that Flash won’t appear on the devices any time soon, but is this really such a big deal?
Experience Versus Information
As a front-end dev for a company that builds primarily Flash experience web sites for ad agency clients, I am acutely aware of the benefits and pitfalls of Flash. In some ways I am happy that Apple is pushing back on Flash. Not because it means there is more work for me, but ultimately because it means that companies will be forced to build better enhanced user experiences outside of Flash.
The advent of Flash and similar technologies, to my mind, has fostered an air of sloppiness. This is, not to finger point at Adobe/Macromedia, the side effect of slack work from company-after-company. Sites that should contain information rich content in HTML, as well as Flash experience, are turned into pure wrappers for flash, forcing HTML to act as a mere delivery agent. In short, if you do not have Flash installed, the page alerts the site visitor to download Flash rather than to supply them with proper alternate content and perhaps what the visitor was actually looking for.
As an end user I would hate to reach a site and be forced to download Flash to view it, and in the mean time, be faced with nothing more than a dead end hole, with ZERO information. As a producer you are turning potential customers/clients/audience members away and surely this should be frowned upon. Developers talk about progressive enhancement and graceful degradation, but surely this should stretch out as much for the look and feel and function of a site, as for the eventual content contained within. All aspects of any site should be inclusive not the reverse.
Identify Your Audience & Cater To Them
Imagine you have a flash experience web site. 20% of the visitors enter it on an iPhone, and then imagine you have no decent Flash alternative experience. What kind of message are you then conveying to those interested parties? In my book, an exceedingly poor one. You are telling them, that you message is not important to them, or that they don’t matter. How often do you get a second chance to rectify that? Not very often I would imagine, and therein lies the need to get it right first time.
The audience is as much about the type of people as the types of devices they are using to access your site. You need to profile on these two dimensions and cater to them properly.
Don’t Special Case At Another’s Expense
When I say cater, I don’t mean special case them, though of course you want your brand to show up it best on every single device available, within each of their limitations of course. The problem though I see, with the entire fanfare around Apple and its products is that developers and clients are again talking in very specific terms about user experience and what is offered to site visitors, at the expense of the market-wide experience.
I know this isn’t a post about Apple and the pros and cons for various features on their devices, but I think the iPhone and now the iPad represent very real issues in terms of the eventual user experience cross-platform on the web. Pardon the pun, but these devices are divisive and where for the last decade or more developers have been encouraged to take an all inclusive approach, with the popularity of Apple products clients are now demanding an Apple-centric experience, but even at the expense of other devices, be they desktops, phones or tablets.
What Can We Learn?
What can we learn from over 15 years of web development history? Well for starters, that in the same way we need to continue to cross-browser test for IE6 till 2014, developers and their clients need to think long and hard about what kind of experience they are building and deploying for ALL site visitors, not just a subset, and do they have all bases covered.
Providing a dead-end to site visitors is never a great option, even if a minimum of well presented and formatted information is required to ensure that they head off to another place that might be more useful to them. In the same way that user experience specialists will frown up an empty 404 error page, we shouldn’t allow mere “install Flash” pages to be served up.
And for those who take the time and effort to optimise the user experience at every single level then there are dividends. For one, the code represents better SEO prospects and when you post a site to the internet, you do of course want it to be found, even if you are marketing it. Those marketing keywords are ALWAYS important, especially so when you are directing potential customers to use them.
Web-head & art collector, living in East London and huffing on the fumes of the planet since '78. Here are my thoughts.
Top Internet Strategy, Marketing & Technology Links – Feb 17, 2010 | Sazbean Feb 17, 2010
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