Sitening Enters Flash Contest, But Refuses To Use Flash

Stupid? Maybe. Radical? Possibly. Insane? Most definitely.

Web design has been hijacked. It’s been hijacked by designers who use proprietary software that locks out users with disabilities, search engine bots, and often times good clean navigation and design. Yet, the web design community seems to be totally unaware of web standards, SEO, and web accessibility.

Many web designers today frown upon anything that doesn’t use Flash. They think using Flash is the sign of a web designer who has made it to the upper echelon of interactive design. They couldn’t be any further from the truth.

At Sitening, we believe good web design…

  • allows everyone to access the website
  • is 100% browser-based (doesn’t required plug-ins)
  • is optimized for search engines
  • can be easily ported to other mediums (mobile device, text reader, etc…)
  • has thin, fast, and clean code
  • is simple and usable (common navigation)

We’re not against Flash, we’re just against the misuse of Flash. When it comes to using Flash in web design, we believe it should be used as an accent, and never used for navigation and page content. Flash is an excellent resource for animations and visual examples on the web.

Having this philosophy and approach should be interesting as we approach the cre824 24 hour web design contest in Chattanooga, TN this weekend. We’ll be competing with a handful of other professional teams who will no doubt be knee deep in Flash. History shows us that we’ll lose in a big way. But who knows, maybe the judges will have an appreciation for a website that everyone can access, and that is optimized for search engines (so people will actually be able to find the website).

One more thing, if you’re at the conference, we’ll be the ones with the no flash logo on our t-shirts.

Filed under: Web Accessibility, Web Design