Thanks for insightful comments. You did a great job saying everything that people typically say about flash, and you said it without a lot of anger, which is rare

I appreciate the list of drawbacks you mentioned because it gives me a great platform to mention all the things that are special about Clover. Let’s see if I can tackle everything you said:

- Flash breaks the back button ad isn’t linkable – not anymore… most savvy designers use SWFAddress which allows complete use of back/forward/refresh and makes every page linkable. We’ll be adding this in our next release.

- Taxes the CPU, drains laptop batteries, and crashes browsers – You’re right that flash taxes the cpu more than most sites, but all of these criticisms are more due to bad programming than anything else. When you compare apples to apples, a large flash site is more like a desktop app than an html page, so it makes sense that it uses more cpu. And of course, you can tax the cpu just as much with javascript. Also, clover doesn’t crash

- Isn’t readily searchable/indexable – Totally, you’re right about that, but of course, we create full html versions of all our sites so everything is optimized very well for search engines.

- Breaks accessibility features unless you build them – Again, you’re right, but for the most part, html does a lousy job of this unless you specifically build with accessibility in mind.

- Isn’t supported on any mobile platforms – That has definitely been an unfortunate downside for a while, although, it does sound like it will change very soon (http://www.g1-news.com/2009/06/23/android-mobile-platforms-to-get-flash-player-10-in-october/). For Clover, we’re just about to release an awesome iPhone-optimized mobile version that should be perfect for mobile browsing.

The main reason that we love Flash over here (and the point that I was trying to make in my post) is that you can create experiences with flash that you can’t even come close to in html. Certainly flash isn’t the end-all-be-all technology for the web, and I very much appreciate that sites like facebook and vimeo use ajax. But I do think that there’s a huge downside to being locked into the boxy html thing – I feel like most html developers choose html over flash because they’re valuing their own programming over their users experience. Obviously that’s a contentious point, so I’m sorry if it sounds offensive. It’s just been my experience

We certainly didn’t choose Flash because it fit our business model. We just knew that we could create a more intuitive and easier to use application in Flash than in any other language. (Although selfishly, I also appreciate the fact that I don’t have to test in 5 browsers anymore!)

Sorry for the long response. Thanks again for the comments.

Ben

Flash used to be a great tool for designing rich interfaces on the web, but HTML/CSS/Javascript has come a long way since the late 90s.

Today, the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits: Flash breaks the back button, taxes the CPU, crashes browsers, drains laptop batteries, isn’t linkable, isn’t readily searchable/indexable, and it breaks all kinds of accessibility features unless you specifically build them in. On top of all that, it isn’t supported on ANY mobile platforms, and that’s not likely to change.

I understand why your business model works for you, but the truth is, the state of the art has long since shifted away from Flash-based web design.

That said, y’all seem to be doing great work. Keep evolving!