Some Random Dude

A while back, I wrote a small article about why I felt Silverlight should fail. The writeup generated a lot of good conversation and a bit of ire from Silverlight supporters (such as this example) so I thought it would be beneficial to write a followup. Let me try to make this clear, I am not a Flash fanboy. While I use Flash to pay the bills, I have written about my concerns with Flash. It is my belief that use of Flash on the web (and other RIA technologies) will continue to dwindle as open-source solutions that provide similar solutions take their place. Even if Silverlight usurps Flash (something I greatly doubt), there may not be much of a kingdom to reign upon once they do. I think Adobe sees this shift, I am unsure if Microsoft does.
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Earlier this week, I asked readers what they disliked about Flash. The post spearheaded a large and helpful discussion on the various issues where Flash needs improvement. Many issues brought up were well know and expected, while others were things I had yet to consider. While I tried to respond to each person’s thoughts, I felt it may be interesting for me to lay out what does not excite me about the Flash technology as a whole. Let me preface this by stating, once again, that I make a living in Flash and there are many, many things that I like about it. I have spent time defending it - however, until some of these issues are addressed, I will continue to have my doubts.
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I spend a large majority of my work day working with or designing for Flash-based interfaces. Flash is essentially how I make a living on a daily basis. That said, there are many personal/philosophical issues I have with Flash on the web that I struggle with everyday I work with it. Flash has almost always been a divisive technology for the web community. Most people fall in either the love or hate camps with few not holding a strong opinion about it. I am planning to go into my thoughts about Flash - my likes, my dislikes and everything in between later this week. But first, I wanted to hear what your frustrations are with the experience of Flash on the web. Your thoughts can hit any subject - vague to specific. I just want to hear from the people whose opinions are the most important, the users.

Recently I posed the question to myself of how many sites I visit on a daily basis that use Flash. When I really thought about it, the answer really shocked me. I would love to hear if my personal experience mimics yours.

Your comments are going to greatly impact how I direct my article, so please lend me your thoughts.

Update: - You can now read what annoys me about Flash.

Silverlight has been quite the buzz around the internet lately. Microsoft’s new product explicitly takes aim at Flash as they try to take on the rich media arena. Up to this point, Flash has basically stood alone at the top as the rich media standard for the browser. I will explain why, from my point of view, I do not see Silverlight changing that reality any time in the near (or far) future.
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I am a bit of a stickler about keeping my swf files as small as possible. One of the biggest hurdles I run into for keeping swf file sizes low is the embedding of fonts. There are best practices you can follow, such as using system fonts for large amounts of copy and not embedding characters that will not be used. Still, a couple fonts and/or a couple different weights and your file size is considerably higher. It was during a project where I was having this very problem when I came up with a little trick to help lower the embed size of fonts - and it is extremely easy to do. Read the rest of this post…