What? The Speedlighter.ca is telling you not to use flash?

Yes – but I mean Adobe Flash software.

Flash is great because it is one media-rich environment that works on every platform. But it is also bad, and increasingly not a great thing to use.

Why?

• It is slow to load. Making your customer wait.. those horrible progress bars: if I see one, I am gone. And I am not alone in that!
• It is slow in performance; very inefficient (especially in playing video).
• It is unreliable – it crashes (Steve Jobs is right in his technical objections to F;lash).
• iPad and iPhone users cannot see it (I keep seeing sites that I cannot see – well, those sites lose me. How many people have an iPad? A lot!
• It is all about “you”. Readers of your site want it to be about them, or at least want to see why they will benefit from spending their time there – they are less interested in seeing why you are so great.

That is why my sites are simple HTML sites.

Yes, I know, I lose out on some functionality and on a lot of coolness. But “it is what it is”, as they say. My sites are clean, can be read by anyone using any device, and are, I hope, more about quickly telling the reader what’s in it for him or her than just about telling the world how great I am.