Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Just Say No to Flash

I remember when CPU time was so precious that researchers at Stanford and Berkeley had to eke it out on shared servers. Now I marvel that I can carry a gig around in my pocket. A terabyte if I wear cargo pants.

Still I’m shocked when a site tells me that it has to install Flash or ActiveX. Usually I navigate away. I have a modest computer. I try not to store much on it. If I allow you to install QuickTime or Flash or ActiveX, I might have to give something up, either speed or memory.

I don’t want to sacrifice space on my computer so that some kid fresh out of college can show off what she learned in programming class. Don’t ask me to slow down my computer so that your site performs better.

But, hey, I’m the woman who refuses to carry a drugstore discount card. I refuse to make my wallet fatter so the store can track my purchases. (Sometimes I give them my ex-husband’s phone number if I’m buying lipstick and hygiene products, just to confuse Big Brother.)

If you’re marketing to me, don’t ask me to inconvenience myself on your behalf.

1 comment:

Leland Scott said...

Hi,
For some time I've been wanting to join some movement to express displeasure with the use of Flash on websites. I couldn't find any, so I decided to start one. Since you have a blog post with the same sentiment, I wanted your thoughts on this idea.

I can provide an image and CSS snippet for a "Just Say No To Flash" campaign, but I wonder what website to point to as the URL.

Besides yours, there are a few other "Say No To Flash" postings, as well as a saynotoflash domain.

You can see a demo of the image/CSS I've put together at http://wp2.musingsfrommars.org/

Some time back, there was a similar movement for IE, called "Too Cool For IE." That one provided images and CSS styles and pointed to page on how to add it to your website. That site is still around: http://www.w3junkies.com/toocool/

Obviously, such an effort is only worth doing if lots of people get "on the bus." Let me know what you think about this idea.

Thanks,
Leland
llscotts@gmail.com