Get Flash to F... Off

Flash sites are the web's equivalent of the blonde portrayed in blonde jokes: Pretty, but really dumb.

As Wikepedia says, the World Wide Web is a global information space which people can access via computers connected to the Internet. Ideally, to achieve that goal of global connectivity, web sites should:

not be hardware-dependent
not be software-dependent
be able to be found and accessed
be accessible to the disabled

Unfortunately, sites written in Macromedia Flash break with all those ideals, for little reason, all for a few cute graphics. Let's look at those areas in turn.

Hardware dependence

Macromedia Flash isn't available for all hardware platforms.
For those with restricted bandwidth (last time I was in Japan, 14.4kbps modem connections were my best net access), Flash is unusably slow. Ordinary graphics on a web site can be turned off in any graphical browser, but a Flash-based site has no such user controls.
For those with slow hardware, Flash is very CPU-intensive. Other CPU-intensive graphics, such as the animation of animated GIFs, can be turned off in a good browser (eg. Mozilla/Firefox), but a Flash-based site has no such user controls.

Software dependence

Macromedia Flash isn't available for all browsers. This is especially true of text-based browsers, such as Lynx, which is a brilliant tool for quick access to the useful (text) data of a web site.
Flash has various versions, and the site may require something other than what's installed on the machine you are currently using.
Users may simply be somewhere where they don't have control over their software environment to the extent that they can install arbitrary software, such as in an airline lounge or a net cafe.

Being found and accessed

While some search engines are now attempting to index Flash sites, their efficiency varies. When there are multiple Flash objects on a page, those will be indexed independently and search engine users will be directed to the individual Flash objects/movies/etc, rather than to the parent web page... unless that web page has actual content.

Accessibility

Many vision-impaired individuals use software to read web sites to them and tell them how to navigate. With HTML, this simply works. With Flash, it might work, but only if the developers have put a great deal of money and effort into testing their site with screen reader software. This is extremely unlikely to happen, except perhaps on a very large site. It should be noted that discrimination against the disabled is illegal in some countries and the 2000 Sydney Olympics was prosecuted for providing a site that wasn't sufficiently usable to the blind... and they weren't even using Flash, just very poor HTML coding practices!

In short, a Flash-based site basically says to visitors: "Unless you have the software we want you to, have copious bandwidth and CPU power, don't mind us controlling what you see and do, and don't have a visual disability, screw you. Cute graphics are more important to us than content."

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