Annoying Flash Techniques

I’ve noticed some interesting Flash mistakes that are worthy of comment.

• Forgetting to put a “Skip Intro” button, forcing visitors to see your stupid FlashSplash page every time they visit. The problem could be “solved” by setting a cookie so visitors only see the animation once unless they click a button to “play it again, Sam.”
• Putting a “Skip Intro” button on the page. Of course, we all realize that a “Skip Intro” button signifies that the content on the page is worthless. Good Web designers only put content that must be viewed on a page. By giving them the option to skip this material, you’re saying it’s not worth seeing. If it isn’t worth seeing, why do you have it on your site in the first place?No, I’m not trying to have it both ways. An introductory Flash animation is a Splash page. Splash pages, as we learned long, long ago, are not necessary.If you must have a “Skip Intro” button, make it big enough so people can see it and have it available as soon as the animation starts. Don’t wait 10 seconds to load the button.
• Making people listen to music. If you have (original) music in your Flash animation, give people the option to turn off the music.And if people turn the off the music on one page, it means they don’t want to hear it on any other page. There are dozens of sites where the programmer hasn’t figured out how to make the music stop on all pages. They have a “Stop the Music” button on each page. Arrgh!!! A good example that may not be work appropriate (see, I warned you) is a fashion site where if you turn off the music on the FlashSplash page and click “Enter”, the music automatically comes back on. The designer should be whipped (unless s/he likes to be whipped).
• Creating a “non-Flash” version of a site that still includes some Flash animation. If you have an HTML version of your Flash site, make sure there’s no Flash. There are few things stupider than using Flash in a non-Flash Web site.

I’d like to mention that you often find Flash with Mystery Meat Navigation — taking one bad technique and making it four times worse.

Then again, the New York Times brilliantly used Flash and MMN on their feature “A Look at 1000 Who Died” (registration is free, but required).

You can view the casualty list by last name, branch, date of death, home town, home state, gender, age, type of death, and “other.” On the “Other” page, they could use some contrast. Black type on brown background is hard to read.

When Flash works the results are powerful.