Updated: This is easily the most-trafficked post in the past two months. So let me add a little something to the link above. To wit:
Seven Reasons to Hate Flash Splash Screens
(a work in progress)
- A lot of them look like they were sold to clients by web designers aiming to pad their billables.
- Others look like they were built by web designers aiming to impress other web designers.
- Still others look like they were created from mass templates, with no thought to the particular needs of this web site – or, more importantly, its visitors.
- They force users to wait or find the cunningly concealed “Skip Intro” link before getting to something they actually want.
- Flash can slow older computers to a crawl, especially if web designers don’t try to keep their animations lean.
- Nearly every Flash splash screen is intended to bombard the visitor with information-free message and branding. People don’t like being messaged at… no, not even if the logos twirl.
- Most give no value at all to the visually impaired – unless you count the tinny pseudo-techno soundtrack so many of them inflict on listeners.
Am I anti-Flash? Not a bit. Flash can be a very useful technology – a low-overhead way of offering engaging, entertaining content to visitors.
But that’s not the way the splash screen crowd tends to use it. And unless you can come up with a good answer to the question “Why am I seeing this?”, maybe you should just go straight to the web site – which is what your visitors came for in the first place.
