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Flash, from Adobe, was a platform that helped shape the web for more than a decade. It was good at vector graphics, animations, introductions, games and highly interactive interfaces, which made it appealing to web designers on the surface. Want a splash page with a 3D animation of your logo? A navigation bar that works like a mini video game? Flash could do it.
Today the question has a simple answer. Adobe ended support for Flash Player at the end of 2020, and all major browsers have removed it, so a Flash site will not run at all. It is still worth understanding why Flash was a bad choice for business sites even when it worked, because the same mistakes show up in modern designs. Here are the top reasons, and what to use instead.
Flash was never supported on all devices
Flash content was not accessible on every device. Apple never allowed it on iPhones and iPads, and Android dropped support. Mobile visitors simply could not use pages built in Flash, which cost sites a lot of potential traffic. If you are wondering why, the piece Steve Jobs wrote in 2010 explaining Apple’s decision makes interesting reading.
Now that browsers have removed Flash entirely, even desktop visitors cannot see old Flash content. Any section of a site that depended on it is blank.
Flash was not SEO friendly
You could work around the mobile problem by building two versions of your site, but that would not solve the SEO problem. Search engines could not index Flash like normal text, so almost nothing inside a Flash file could show up in search results.
Think of a Flash element as a video embedded in your page. Google cannot watch it, so it does not know what it is about.
Flash sites had a single URL
Anything that happened inside a Flash site lived at one URL. You could not build links to individual pages, and visitors could not share an article they liked. The back button did not work as people expected, and they could not bookmark a page they wanted to come back to.
Flash was never future-proof
Future-proofing a website means building it so it will keep working on the devices people will use years from now. Flash failed that test, since many devices never supported it and the technology was eventually retired. Sites built in Flash had to be rebuilt from scratch, which is a costly lesson in choosing open web standards.
Flash slowed pages down
A Flash site had to load before anyone could use it, which could take a long time on slower connections. Because page speed matters to visitors and to Google, that is a self-inflicted wound.
Flash sites also had a habit of using loud, over-the-top design choices: very long splash pages, intrusive music and complicated menus that confused visitors. You can build a site without those things, but the two often came together, and if you skip the bells and whistles, you do not really need Flash.
Use HTML5, CSS and JavaScript instead
Everything Flash was used for can now be done with open web standards. Modern sites use HTML5 and CSS for layout and animation, JavaScript for interactivity, SVG for scalable graphics, and standard video formats for motion. These work on every device, load faster, can be indexed by search engines and give every page its own URL.
If your site still has Flash content, it is time for a redesign. Our team can build you a fast, mobile-friendly website that works on every device and is built to be found.
“Working with SmartSites has been an experience. Their team shows true reliability and professionalism in managing our ads and overall strategy.”
Erick LevyaThe Chef's Idea
