Furthermore, websites done entirely in Flash are still being pushed - indicating that proliferation of best-practices and advantages, as pertaining to web-design, are still not well known. Perhaps it’s time to outline (at least briefly), why doing an entire site in Flash is a bad idea.

A brief history of the problem

The problems leading to people designing entirely Flash-based websites are in many ways related to, or the same as, those found in the design of poor websites. If we understand why this happens, then there’s less ignorance - and hopefully less thinking that people who design entire Flash websites are “idiots” - they are not. There’s just a basic misunderstanding of what’s at stake, and problem compounded by standards not followed by either designers or browsers.

Alright, so what is wrong then?

To the average user, there’s nothing wrong with Flash-based websites. To many, they represent a unique experience - you’re able to do many things in Flash (such as animations, nice vector graphics, etc.) that you simply cannot do in regular XHTML. Additionally, nicely-designed Flash websites can look nifty and have that “wow-cool” effect. In fact, proper use of Flash can enhance a website without harming it - sIFR being the best example that comes to mind; furthermore, Flash games are probably here to stay. However, making an entire website in Flash can have many negative effects.

When I say “entire website”, I mean that all the content - text, links, pictures - is contained within Flash. This is bad, because it eschews standards-based content representation (like XHTML and CSS) for a proprietary format. Perhaps because of this, it also has negative effects on usability and accessibility - it’s often hard to search for text in Flash-based websites (the standard browser search doesn’t work), text resizing is difficult, and often widgets (such as the scrollbar) are re-designed or made to look different, which can be confusing to a user.

Furthermore, Flash content is hard for search engines to index. If you’re making some sort of website, chances are that you want it to be popular, especially if it’s a store. If you have your content displayed via Flash, it’s inherently difficult for Search Engines to get at it and add it to their index, thus making it harder for people to find your website. You have to take special steps to ensure that a search engine will index it - when just doing the website in regular XHTML would have probably sufficed. Additionally, this doesn’t help those who are disabled - Flash is notorious for being inaccessible.

But for me, the biggest problem is that the use of Flash sets the stage for bad design. Jakob Nielson sums this up best in his article, Flash: 99% Bad. (Sometimes I think he’s too pragmatic, but he hits the nail right on the head here.) The issue is not whether Flash is inherently bad - it isn’t - but rather it tends to be used poorly and creates issues. For example, Flash is often used for things that don’t add much value to the site, and in many cases, actually make it harder or more annoying to use. The things that come best to mind are useless fancy animations, and sound effects or music. A website that automatically plays music or sounds is one of my pet peeves - I make it a point never to revisit that site. I’m not sure how mainstream users feel about this sort of stuff, but I believe once the “wow-cool” factor of a Flash-based website has worn off, users quickly realize that they tend to be harder to use.

Additionally, Flash is used for things where it’s simple not needed. The most popular example I can think of is the menu of links most websites use. There is no reason to do this in Flash - as mentioned before, complex animations slow things down and detract from the content being presented, and furthermore, many of the animations can be done in JavaScript, with proper regards to standards and graceful degradation, something Flash does not do very well.

By graceful degradation, I mean how does your site respond when someone doesn’t support that feature? For most Flash websites, if the user doesn’t have Flash, they’re outta luck - they’re greeted with a very unfriendly link telling them to get the latest Flash player. Before anyone points out that “most people have Flash”, remember that accessibility also has to be taken into account. For people using speech readers this is a very important problem. And again, most Search engines don’t care for Flash.

Other problems with Flash-based websites are small but noticeable. They often break the back-button functionality, don’t work as great on slower computers, and usually take longer to load than non-Flash-based websites. These are the factors that make my cringe anytime I visit a website done entirely in Flash.

What can be done

Firstly, many of the problems can be traced to a need to add “neat” effects to a websites, such as the aforementioned animations and so forth. Much of this simply isn’t needed as it doesn’t add real value to the content, which should be the most important part of a website. While it’s true that many people will think that the effects are “cool”, effects are not what will keep users returning to a website - fresh content is what does that, and often neat graphical effects get in the way of displaying content in a fast and efficient manner, thus detracting from the most important aspect of a website.

I’m not saying that a website can only be done one way for it to be “good”. And, I’m not saying that a website must not have Flash in order for it to be good - there are many ways for Flash to enhance a site’s usefulness. However, designing a website entirely in Flash is a poor choice when the current drop of standards-friendly tools like XHTML, CSS and JavaScript were made for website design. Flash was not - and this is why the websites are inherently less accessible and usable. Designing using standards-based approaches doesn’t have to boring, and doesn’t have to result in websites that all look alike. One look at the CSS Zen Garden and you’ll it to be exact opposite of that.

Summing it all up

Flash is not inherently bad, but it tends to be overused to the point where many do consider it to be evil. This tends to happen when web designers haven’t read up on the benefits of standards or proper design. This doesn’t indicate that someone is “stupid”, but rather that they just haven’t been exposed to all the knowledge that is out there. Unfortunately, as with poor website design, it’s easy to start down the wrong path.

Furthermore, many of the criticisms about Flash can also be applied to Ajax, which I tend to promote instead of Flash. Unfortunately, it’s also easy to use Ajax improperly, and there are accessibility issues as well. Thankfully, these are being addressed relatively early in Ajax’s development, and we can only hope that it doesn’t suffer from overuse and misuse like Flash has.

If you’re a web designer, you may be disenchanted everytime you visit a poorly-designed or poorly-structured site. Why do these still persist, despite proper techniques of content/presentation separation having been around since 2001? Has the whole world gone mad? Fortunately no - but it is a complex problem.

The problem of poorly designed websites, in my opinion, can be traced to two important factors, both of which can be assigned varying degrees of “blame”, depending on your viewpoint. There are tons of complicating factors, but I believe these to be the two most important.

Firstly, HTML (the precursor to XHTML), was designed as a document markup language (hence the name), completely devoid or separate of presentation information. Since the earliest users of the web were mostly from academic circles, it’s no surprise that much of the markup in HTML applies to formatting things like scientific journal papers, which typically make extensive use of headings, lists, and other semantic elements. The complete lack of presentation styles in the first version of HTML might seem like a good thing nowadays to web designers “in the know”, but unfortunately, most people don’t think that way. This resulted in later version of HTML adding presentational elements such as font, and even browsers implementing their own non-standard elements, all due to user-demand for control of presentation. Much of these elements have now been depreciated or eliminated, but they still remain in use - it’s hard to close the door once it’s been opened.

The problem lies in the interpretation of what exactly is content, and what is presentation. Content exists for the purpose of communicating information or a concept; presentation defines how that content should be shown. However, most non-technical people tend to blur the line between the two - for most people, presentation is part of the communication process. This is an equally valid point-of-view, and is in fact, probably the normal way to view things - human beings are visual creatures.

It takes a different sort of person to consciously think “This part of the document should be marked up with a list because it depicts a series of objects with some sort of logical relation among them”. Most people simply read the list as-is, but subconsciously, they are probably making the same connection. I think this has to do with the person’s MBTI, (and obviously their areas of education), but that’s another topic altogether.

The second factor deals with the unusually low-barrier to entry for making a website. HTML, quoted as the lingua franca of the web, is a fairly easy language to learn, as far as learning topics in computer science go. A grade school kid who can read at a decent level can easily learn the basics and begin coding the basics of a web page almost immediately. This is enhanced by the availability of many WYSIWYG HTML editors that make creating web pages as easy as using Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. However, while HTML is easy to learn, like many other things it is hard to truly master, especially when using it properly with a combination of CSS and JavaScript. This creates the situation where “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing“.

While it’s easy to make a web page, it’s also easy to flaunt disregard for web-standards, accessibility and usuability, all in the name of making a page that looks “nifty” or “cool”. This is perhaps best seen in the unending multitude of MySpace pages, where users are given control to customize almost any part of their page. This has resulted in pages that are either poorly designed, hard to use, do annoying things like play music, or a combination of the above, creating a haven that is a throwback to the Geocities of the 1990’s. The problem is compounded by problems with proper implementation of best-practices as well as the fundamentally different ways design must be done on the web as opposed to other forms of media such as print.

In reality, HTML is a language that demands almost the same level of attention to detail as a programming language. However, since programming languages are harder to learn, they present a greater barrier to entry that keep out those not willing to learn things the right way. (If you make a syntax mistake, the program will probably not compile or run - however some would argue that there’s still a lot of problems related to poor programming practices as well.) Some people would like these strict rules to apply to XHTML as well - in fact they do, if XHTML is served as XML, which it was intended to be. This has created a very stratified community of “website designers”, best summed up in Roger Johansson’s article on Levels of HTML knowledge.

Furthermore, good structural HTML is important if you care about Google or any other search engine indexing your site properly. The Googlebot (their spider that crawls the web, searching for new content to add to their search index) will have the easiest time indexing your site if you’ve properly separated content from presentation, and used meaningful (X)HTML elements to markup your content. Many people do not understand this - they either don’t understand or have the false view that search engines view websites in the same way that people do, through a browser. Additionally, if you care at all about accessibility, you must follow web-standards, which are conducive to designing a website that is accessible by anyone with disabilities.

I don’t draconian parsing rules are the solution, as for something to be the lingua franca of the web, it must be accessible to use by all. Easy to use, standards-compliant XHTML editors are what is needed, but I acknowledge that the problem is difficult. Thankfully, things are improving - despite the presence of sites like MySpace, the increasing popularity of blogs has given another outlet for people to create personal websites. Most of these blogging platforms are relatively standards-compliant, and in line with the spirit of web standards as well, and in many ways have been at the forefront of promoting good website design. Let’s hope more sites follow suit.

Necessarily accessible

In fact, many governments, both at the upper and lower levels, have been mandating accessibility for public websites. In the United States, there’s Section 508, and in Europe, they’re working on making it mandatory. Here in Canada, I don’t think there’s any federal law on it, though I might be mistaken. However, in Ontario, I believe the ODA applies, or will apply, to most institutions that receive government funding, including universities, which is all the more reason for them to adopt standards.

Doing it right

Designing an accessible website is not particularly hard, but it does take some extra planning. Not being a public institution, I’ll admit I haven’t taken accessibility to heart, as there are many things I could do to improve it. Thankfully, there are plenty of resources out there. The Web Accessibility Initiative is a good starting point, and the Watchfire WebXACT tool will help evaluate your site for accessibility. My site fails horribly right now, however, it wouldn’t be too hard to fix this, but I just haven’t bothered because I’m not aiming to reach everyone; a weak excuse, but an excuse nonetheless. With a good platform like WordPress, site-wide changes aren’t hard to implement, and structured blogging, a sort of microformat, could help even more.

In essence, making an accessible website is closely related to making your site semantically sound. The two aren’t exactly the same, but if you use semantic markup and get used to it, making things accessible becomes a lot easier. Every web designer (and also web developers) should be aware of this, and take these best practices to heart. If I were to design a site for a company or any institution that aimed to reach out to as many people as possible, I would definitely factor in accessibility and semantically sound markup from the beginning, despite the extra planning it would take. Any time you spent in during this stage would more than make up for any extra time you’d have to spend converting a poorly-designed site to be accessible.

The other side of accessibility

However, one aspect I think is often missed out on is the other side of web accessibility; what I mean by this is that not only must content be accessible, but the ability to produce content should also be accessible to all, regardless of their technical knowledge about web standards.

In the past, this was almost impossible. Before there were WYSIWYG editors, people had to write HTML by hand, something not everyone can do. Even when people did know how to use HTML, it was not always used correctly, and rarely with accessibility in mind. The dawn of WYSIWYG editors did not improve this at all, as most of them tended to produce a tag soup of HTML that was rarely valid, much less accessible. (Versions of Microsoft Frontpage are perhaps a good example.)

Thus, the web turned into a jumble of unsound pages and examples of the ineffective use of HTML, and later, XHTML. I don’t believe this was the fundamental fault of the authors, as I don’t believe everyone who wants to publish content on the web should have to understand all the details of XHTML - after all, does the author of a book usually have to understand all the intricate details of book publishing? I believe the fault lay with the lack of an easy-to-use editor that could produce structurally sound markup.

Thankfully, things are getting better. Ever since web accessibility standards were clearly defined, there have been movements to make publishing well marked-up content easier on the web. Firstly, many online blogging services offer fairly easy-to-use editors, and the next version of Word will support blogging, and hopefully, valid XHTML output. TinyMCE, a WYSIWYG editor written entirely in JavaScript, can be used with WordPress and Drupal, popular blog and CMS platforms, respectively. It effectively provides a word-processor-like interface for document creation, and should greatly improve people’s ability to easily publish web content within a CMS without having to burden a tech services department.

Let’s hope these editors continue to improve to increase accessibility, on both sides of the coin.