As I have… “matured“… I have become more tolerant towards all kinds of web technologies. Web 2.0 has sort of forced a lot of them upon us anyways. There is one that I still have trouble with though. That one is Flash.
For my last post, I was over at the Hyundai website and I hit some of my points of frustration with this technology. It’s clunky. I know it’s supposed to be all cool and fancy, but since all of the menus and other navigation structures are designed from scratch and are left to the interpretation of the designer, many controls are unfamiliar because they are new/unique.
Here’s the big one though. Flash breaks the back button. The back button is one of the fundamental elements that people use while navigating the web. It’s a safety net that allows free exploration of a site with the knowledge that you’ll always be able to get back to where you were. I understand that you may feel as though there are situations where you don’t want the user to go back but trust me, users don’t care. They want to do what they want. It may sound unfortunate from a designer’s perspective, but that’s the world we work in. The users want to do what they want and if you don’t let them, they have LOTS of alternative places to go.
As a final annoyance, I really am frustrated by websites that ask for the same information over and over. I don’t block cookies so any choice you ask me to make, I don’t want to be asked again. Upon entering the site, you’re forced to select your province. That’s fine, but as I further navigated the site I was asked for my province twice more. Once, when I wanted to build and price and then again when I wanted to check the offers. There’s no need for that today. We’re way past that.
All of those rants aside, I absolutely understand the very real challenges faced by large organizations trying to operate interactive websites for their customers. It’s not easy to get it all right and for the three problems I have here, they do a lot well on their site that I haven’t pointed out. Hyundai Canada just happened to be the latest to push my pet peeve buttons. They’re not the first and certainly won’t be the last. Today though, they are a great example of things that you can avoid when you work on your web project.
usability, web design, web development
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Joe Takkle // May 29, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I completely agree with you on the bases of Flash. As a self proclaimed web designer I’ve alway enjoyed the whole design aspect of a website done completely in Flash yet it introduces some serious problems. It has no SEO or Search Engine value if a site is completely done in Flash. SE’s can’t read flash. As much as I enjoy the visual aspects it hurts to know that it has almost no value at all as far as google is concerned.
2 Duncan Rice // Jun 1, 2008 at 3:06 pm
If google has taught us anything it’s that whitespace can be a good thing, trouble is we don’t all have the position to be able to do it.
Most of our sites need lots of content to get anywhere in the rankings and adverts to pay for them, so white-open spaces is out, but I most definately agree that overdosing on flash is not the way to go.
3 Leicester Creare // Jun 12, 2008 at 5:01 am
Flash shouldn’t be used to make an entire web-site. I believe that flash should be used in moderation, almost like a moving imagine or diagram, rather than anything substantial.
Unless something massive happens with Flash, I.E Adobe make flash work with things like the ‘back’ button, then I think its’ days are number, as AJAX and other methods are proving more accessible.
4 Kevin // Jun 17, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I think Flash will find a way to evolve and solve most of these problems.
5 John Hunter // Jun 20, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Right on. It is amazing how many sites obviously spent huge amounts of money fail to follow even the most basic usability principles. Back button must work. You must be able to send someone a rul to the specific “page” you are viewing (flash breaks this too). Very lame.