Why shouldn't I use Flash?

Question

I\'ve heard many times that I should avoid flash for my website. Yet no one has told me a good reason for this. I\'ve searched for reasons and I see many that are not true (such

Answer 1

Edit: It might go without saying, but this answer is over a decade old at this point and there is now absolutely no good reason I can think of to use Flash. All of the functionality that Flash has is now natively supported by modern web browsers.

---

You cannot open links in a new tab in Flash. You cannot use the browser's "Find" feature in Flash. You cannot zoom in Flash. You cannot use mouse gestures in Flash. You cannot use your browser's spellcheck in Flash. I could go on.

However, you can play video and audio in Flash. You can show complex animations in Flash. You can access the user's webcam and microphone in Flash. And you can do many other things in Flash that you cannot do in HTML--in a cross-browser way.

In other words, Flash is bad for usability, but has many legitimate uses. If you need one of Flash's features and HTML just doesn't cut it, there is no reason not to use Flash. However, you need to be aware of the drawbacks and not use it simply because you want to.