I agree completely. I'm also tired of these websites that have a large picture on the pain page, maybe some neat text with some special font and right there they're F*ing special. Give me a break. Although I do like creativity and art, I don't like it when it's not functional. Where is the content? The big ass picture is covering up the truth that there isn't jack crap. It's like some of the lamer guys i see in my high school with guitars thinking they're so cool but can they actually play anything good on them. Hell no.

Are the websites linked to on http://www.designiskinky.com/mugshot/mugshots.php3 for real or were they made up as parodies?

http://www.berebene.ch/index2.html is what happens in Old Europe when people go berserk on Flash ;-)

Claude

The sites are real, very real. Most are experiments. It's more like trying to show up the last set of crap that was uploaded the month before. Yeah Anthony, most probably ARE students looking to prove themselves. I also hate the Macromedia take over. Flash is just that, "flash." It can be functional if used correctly but when it's used in a functional way it kinda defeats the purpose of itself; it turns into a form or Java looking menu. Woopie doodie I say. I believe Flash is a trend personally. Funny thing is... for almost every Flash site there is an alternate one built from pure HTML that works smooth and fast... you know... just in case.

Yes....it's true...and I am ready to give up on Flash after 4 years of designing and programming in it. The fact is, Macromedia has built a bloated, processor eating monster that can't be properly subdued with code and should be put to sleep.

Dan (14hrs no sleep coding flash actionscript)

Who really wants to spend 20 secs watching a company logo swirl around? I think most designers agree that flash sucks, especially when the animation(s)don't include a skip feature or assume the user has a fast connection. I've seen some cool looking sites done in flash, but "cool looking" is about it, the content usually sucks.

Dear Digruntaled Flash Geeks...

Like any other technological application, there can be many examples that can pointed to which may display both the good and the bad.

I won't try to convince any of the preceeding negative comment authors why they might review their data, that might require they do some more research.

The bottom line is Flash is just one element in a very large array of tools that are for you to use or not use.

I can just say from a development side. Flash sucks. Even though the controls are amoung the easiest to learn, understanding the program is really hard. The flash interface sucks bad. The menus disappear if you click on them the wrong way. The auto-dock function makes me bannanas. There are many many programs that deal with much more complicated content than flash (such as maya or after effects) that have a muuuuuuuuuch better interface. I've take two classes in flash. I still don't know what the hell I'm doing. Maya? I've had one class and I can fly around that program like nobody's business.

I'm on a Mac, and apparently some flash sites run piss poor on the mac o/s. (G4 350, 512M, OS X) - at least one developer tried to use that excuse.

The problem is when Flash interferes with the information. It should not take 10 minutes to see tourdates for a band. The two worst sites I've experienced are
massiveattack.co.uk
realvast.com

As with the previous comments, I feel like I'm being subjected to the self-aggrandizing efforts of an overly teched webhead.

Hi Anthony,

our sites have made their way to the TOP10 in google for "flash sucks" :)

How about a link exchange for pages with this topic?

I would link to
http://anthony.ianniciello.net/blog/archives/000006.html

from http://www.uberdose.com/kbase/flash-sucks/

with the right anchor text, like "Anthony on 'Flash Sucks'"

Let me know if that sounds like having fun :)

I only enabled flash when necessary... this program easily toggles flash on/off (and when it's off, there are no install requests - just a tiny "x" icon where the ad would otherwise be)...

http://www.unhsolutions.net/FPC/index.shtml

Let's face it there are different tools for different jobs. Flash performs jobs that Html, etc. do not perform. Yes, alot of people do abuse Flash. Personally I like to create HTML-like sites using Flash. Kind of the best of both worlds; fast loading, no fluff.
Flash is not something you can learn over night and I think this is something else that makes people not like it. Many people enjoy the benefits of using Flash; just because some don't isn't a reason to dismiss it as useful piece of software. Sweeping generalizations are never good to make and quite often are the sign of ignorance.

If you hate a flash page don't visit it. Stick to your little programming sites and have a ball. What's your problem you obsessives. Take your anger on something that really sucks, people who post on web sites ranting about how much something sucks, what a complete waste of time.
-Rich Greenfield

kewl

I agree with Rich. Its optional, so why worry?

Whatever cool things you can do in html/javascript, you can do in Flash much better.

Whatever you can f*ck up in html/javascript, you can f*ck up in Flash much worse.

One thing that bums me about Flash when it fails is that it can fail completely. With a web application, that's unacceptable, and usually avoidable. If you build your program with a little care, your users should never have to deal with even a 404 or 500 error. But with Flash, I've seen very expensive, very high end (harrumphttp://www.buckheadrestaurants.comharrumph) websites that just show an empty page when they fail. Users deserve better error handling, and when you get a certain minimum level (404, 500) built into the web itself, there's no excuse.

There is a huge add on TV right now that is http://www.esuvee.com but if you go there, you are taken to the "NO FLASH INSTALLED" page. No HTML version available. That really gripes me that they spent all the money to have a website that a lot of people can't view. (or like me, refuse to install it due to a host of viruses).
So, I don't know anything about "ESUVEE.com" but I am not impressed at all. I guess I'll never know.

I agree, Flash sucks. It is the only program that i work with that annoys me more than anything.

The interface, everything about it, was badly designed.

I also work with 3d modeling/animation programs like Lightwave and i never have that feeling.

But when i start working with Flash, i get stressed out,

FLASH SUCKS! THEYRE STRESSFUL!!

Flash sucks hey?

http://www.tokyoplastic.com/

your simply wrong.

I personally think pens SUCK. Pencils are much better. Everything you can write with a pen you can write with a pencil.

FLASH must be FLUSHED OUT! HEHE!

If I can't view your web page with lynx, your web page sucks. If you can't say it with plain text, you have nothing to say.

I wrote a (very slow) strategy game in flash 2 years ago, never could quite get the fonts to appear the same on different windows configurations despite massive tweaking, god forbid getting it the same over different platforms.

No doubt, a heavy Flash site is one of the most annoying things out there. When I find a design firm that has some very cool products I want to blog that sucker so other people can see the coolness. When I do a posting I like to include a sample of what the reader is going to get, lets say a photo of one of the products. (GASP) What a concept! That's a big no-go if everything is in Flash. What a major pain. It's almost like they don't want people to promote traffic to their firm.
Any why is it design firms? You would think that they would be able to design a better page to promote the firm than something that requires Flash to view it.

Like HOSHI said above, Flash is only a tool/platform, albeit a complex one. Most of the anger vented above is understandable, but obviously stems from the users inability to use/understand it's stregths and weeknesses. If any of you work for creative, design, interactive design or ad agencies (which I am assuming you do) you surely know that web design is not all about just pure information retrieval. Marketing, and advertising sites often times require more creative approaches to luring customers into buying their products. It is about selling a lifestyle, so "cool" is advantageous. It's sad, but it's true.

Flash is an extremely effective vehicle when targeting certain audiences, especially young people. Remember, just like printed materials, web sites have many different purposes, mediums and audiences.

Yeah, I'm sick of the Flash popups that always want me to install it. Over and over again. I found this JT flash manager, and FlashAndPicsControlSetup you can install that will stop the the annoying "INstall Flash" popup

Brian Elliott is right. Flash is very effective when targeted to the right audience. I think a lot of my own frustration with the technology definitely stems from it's being used in inappropriate places.

Where Flash is weakest is in sites where the amount of content is such that a user really should have all of the browser interface tools at their disposal. In content driven sites keyboard commands which Flash tends to defeat are key to the user experience. Bookmarking, back/forward navigation, page up/page down, select all, copy, etc. should always be available to a user, because that for the most part is the expected behavior of a web browser.

When you build an all Flash site you ignore this really important aspect of usability.

I 100% agree with the accessment that Flash sucks. It sucks so much that I've uninstalled it from my home machine, where I prefer to listen to my own music than someone else's joke of a looping pos that is embedded in a Flash page, and where I need to read news or the weather without being interrupted by flash advertisements taking over my screen or blowing out my eardrums.

Oh, and I'm not a damn old fart blasting Flash because it hurts my eyes. I've been hopping online since I was 12 years old, and I'm a recent college graduate. I know that my former fellow classmates don't give a rat's ass about Flash, either. Their favorite site are thefacebook.com and classmates.com, which have not a single bit of Flash, but are sites with content they want.

People want information online, and to get that information quickly. They don't want to spend two minutes waiting for a "cool" animation to load, and another two minutes trying to figure out how to navigate the horrible Flash monstrosity thrown at them. And most of all, they don't want auto-playing music or noises that they didn't ask for coming out of their speakers or headphones!

*Steps off the soapbox* Okay, I'm done. I still love All Your Base Are Belong to Us, and remember the good old days of Flash when it was still used for just, gasp, movies...

yeah i agree but not to that great of an extent. sure flash is bad sometimes but in life nothing is liked by everyone and works every where but also nothing in life is hated by everyone and fails everywhere. you have to take the good with the bad. you can't always win. that's why it is optional. somethings are bad whilst some aren't. one that isn't in my opinion would be any of darkhampster0's movies. just solid weird but still good and the load time isn't long... well at least not on my computer or any other i've tried. but if you only look at the negatives anything can look worse then it is. oh and yes i know my grammar's bad but i don't care. you know what i'm saying.

I just love how there is no support for flash in OpenBSD. If I was rich I would totally fun an open alternative to Flash, if one does not allready exist. Does one exist?

What I can't stand, aside from flash, is people who try to tell you what you should be saying and what you should be doing with you time. If you invested all those hours learning Flash "the right way" and now you just can do with out it, then by all means use it. But, many of us will leave your site for that reason and many others will not be able to view it. So have a blast, but flash really does suck!

Get a life losers. Everything in this world is done with flash you dumb fucks. Stop being abunch of cry baby bitchs. You guys sound like abunch of 5 year olds. Anyway lol.

god this program sucks. I've worked in high end 3d programs that are far more intuitive than this piece of crap. Everytime i try and use this crappy crappy program some god damn thing fucks up in the middle and I have to start all from scratch. crappy crappy crappy frustrating POS program.

I completely and utterly agree. Flash is the most over-rated plug-in ever to exist! Anything that can be done in Flash can be done using JavaScript/DHTML. And Fuck Macromedia for hyping it so much. If I hear about that stupid hotel reservation site one more time I think I'll puke. And that stupid online motorcycle ecommerce site blows. Macromedia claims, 90% of people that have browsers have Flash installed on them. What they fail to mention is that they're constantly upgrading the dam thing, so for all we know 90% of the plugins installed are a version of Flash much lower than the most recent version. Some may say, big deal, it only takes two seconds to download the newest version. Well yeah, it also only takes a minute to download the most recent browser. I'd rather download a browser than a stupid plug-in. And I hate all you Flash retards that so quickly jumped on Macromedia's balls without putting any thought into what you were doing. And all you idiot "designers" that think new age music and Flash movies were made for each other. And then all you idiots that think flash is "ubiquitous." Ohhh.. another buzz word! Better get a lot of use out of it! It may justify you getting a raise at your brochure designing job! Tee hee. Flash must die.