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CSS vs Flash
I have had the fortunate experience to have worked in a variety of disciplines as a designer over the past 10 years. I was immediately fascinated by the web when it first emerged back in the 1990′s. The ability to create and post something online for everyone to view was exciting and disappointing at the same time. The idea of having something accessible at any time and to anyone was great, but the lack of any substance or style to the end product was a letdown.I quickly learned HTML on my own and found it easy to work with but my goal was structuring content in such a way as to make it attractive. I played heavily with Fireworks, Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG tools and was able to build brochureware sites in no time. The problem was not that I could make a site look pretty, but that the graphics were so overwhelming that it bogged down the browser. The clients loved the sites and the graphics because it looked just like their brochure. But I was left feeling empty as the website was not allowing for the full potential of what it could truly do.
Over time Macromedia Flash became a very “cool” way to create a website. As a designer I could do anything I wanted and make it look beautiful by playing animations, music and video. I created lots of websites in Flash and thought this was the future of all websites from now on. Why wouldn’t anyone want a website that was perfectly designed, had every font render beautifully and was interactive on so many levels?
Then one day, a friend showed me the beauty of CSS. It was so simple and straightforward. What was this idea of separating design and content? I had read about it years ago and thought it was just a passing fad, but to my surprise I learned the community grew a hundred-fold. The idea of CSS blew my mind away. What a wonderful idea to style an entire website using a few stylesheets. It made obvious sense since graphic design had used it for years in page layout programs. Here was a way to design websites that were both beautiful and functional. I didn’t need a plugin created by a single piece of proprietary software that was owned by a monopoly. This was website design at its best supported by an open and supportive community working together to make web standards and design coexist in harmony.
So what do I think is better? CSS or Flash? Maybe you will have a different opinion than I, but I certainly feel that one must be better than the other. Some will argue that a tool is just a tool depending on who uses it. But I do believe that one tool that allows for the creation of so many more tools and that can democratize the web, must inherently be better by nature. In that respect, I have read and heard a lot of people for and against web standards. People working with Flash say it’s not that important. Screen reader technology is built into Flash. But what about those who don’t have the devices compatible with it’s screen reader? What about the designers who create Flash sites and don’t make content, usability, screen readers and most of all, the visitor a priority?
CSS provides a simple framework with which to style content for almost anything imaginable. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and does what its name implies. Make a change to the stylesheet and the whole site gets updated with the new attributes. With CSS you are able to focus on the structure and form. It’s incredibly flexible and compact. It allows for the widest range of compatibility and accessibility than anything else we have. It’s widely accepted and promoted by designers and programmers alike in the sense that they are able to work collaboratively towards a common goal. CSS is intuitive and allows everyone to understand page structure, format, layout and style. It may have one of the largest and most dedicated group of followers. But the pure beauty of it is that content and design are separate. The content becomes a bit of digestible information that any browser or device can “read”. The design structures that content but does not affect it. If someone needs to view the website in all its glory, then it’s there. If not, then the content will always be there as well. Now, CSS does not always work all the time. That is too idealistic. But in the end, it is progress moving forward and lighting the way towards a basic level of standards, usability and accesibility that is one of many goals in the democratization of the web.
Flash, on the other hand, is a beast that has become an overwhelmingly bloated technology that ceases to be “user-friendly”. Imagine my shock and dismay, either because of my ignorance or denial, when I had learned that the finest design publications had been giving top awards year after year to sites designed mostly in Flash. I wondered how this could be! I decided to count the number of websites these awards had been given to and it resulted in over 80-90% of the sites had been designed in Flash. Sure, they were beautifully designed, interactive to the nth degree and a joy to look at, but what about the other factors? Every site I visited had a loading screen or animation for it. Why should I wait and view a loading bar? I thought that had been outlawed since the 1990′s. But no, as media conglomerates have grown, so too has their websites. Huge loading times waiting for graphics, sound, video and animation has become the priority and “content” has been relegated to the back of the line.
I understand that Flash has its strengths that cannot be matched by CSS and that developers are working hard to make it more accessible, user-friendly and optimized for the web. That is a noble pursuit and they deserve a gold star. The CSS community, however is made up of designers, programmers and others who pursue a higher ideal than what Flash can offer. We speak to a larger audience and are not confined by the limitations of proprietary software. With Flash, you are given one set of tools that plays well only with it’s brothers and sisters (Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks and Dreamweaver.) CSS on the other hand is open to the public and not built with the few in mind. We don’t need to purchase $1,000 in software and worry about managing vast amounts of content when it rears its ugly head. We don’t need to worry about SEO, browser compatibility and usability. Flash, on the other hand, does need to worry about these things despite the best arguments out there. Flash developers also need to worry about an extra layer of processing required by a person’s video card, browser and operating system which CSS does not.
The biggest reasons against Flash should be obvious to all and I compiled this tiny list:
- Flash is a proprietary and closed technology. The majority of developers are not allowed to make it better.
- Flash is very expensive for developers and designers.
- Flash only plays well with its brothers and sisters (Adobe Products: Fireworks, Photoshop and Dreamweaver.)
- Flash relies on CPU intensive tasks that require fast video cards.
- Flash requires users to wait for heavy graphics, animations, audio and video.
- Flash makes it very difficult to manage large amounts of content.
- Flash is not accessibility friendly.
- Flash plugins have become larger and more bloated than ever.
- Flash has allowed the medium to overpower the message.
- Flash is just plain wrong.
In conclusion, I could go on and on as to the reasons against using Flash over CSS but I think it’s pretty clear who I think is the hands down winner. CSS is the David and Flash is the Goliath. “He who wields the best stones and aims with skill and determination has a better chance of hitting their target.” I made this one up, but it suits my analogy just fine.
