The latest Site Reference newsletter reiterates the important rule we’ve known and abided by since we began our business in 1998 – DON’T USE FLASH INTROS no matter how much clients may insist, grovel and beg.

“Please, don’t use a Flash intro on your website. You’d think everyone would realise they’re a bad idea by now, but every web designer still gets clients who just don’t seem to realise that Flash intros are universally mocked and hated. Don’t be one of those people.”

Here’s a list of some of the reasons why flash intros and indeed why pure flash sites should be avoided at all costs.

• Flash intros delay site visitors finding what they came for.
• Gratuitous animation is superfluous.
• Without html content, people without flash enabled will see nothing on visiting your site. Neither will search engines.
• Flash design breaks the browser back button.
• People who need to increase text size because of bad vision will not be able to do so with text integrated in flash. Use of html allows people to choose larger or smaller text sizes if they so desire.
• Link colors don’t work so you can’t see where you’ve been and which links you’ve yet to visit.
• The Find in Page browser feature won’t work.
• Text translators won’t work.

To counter these problems, when animation is required and actually adds something to a site, we always include descriptors within the flash object tag, title tag, and noscript tag. The web page also will have ample text content including text navigation.

Just say NO to flash intros! (and to flash only sites).