21 ways to make your Flash based site suck

I’m not a fan of ‘Flash based’ sites and the main reason for that is barely no-one does them properly. So here’s a list of 21 ways to make your Flash based site suck, so that the next time you build a Flash based site you can really hit that nail on the head.

1. A useless splash page is a requirement

If you’ve got a Flash based website and it doesn’t have a next to pointless splash page that tells us nothing it just isn’t a Flash based website to start with. Try adding an “abstract” render with lots of bend modifiers and bright stars… and set it in space… lots and lots of space.

2. The “none Flash” version of your site must contain Flash

“None Flash” is an industry standard term for “use as much Flash as you can” or “a very sucky replica that doesn’t work in any browser”. You don’t want to be doing things that aren’t industry standard do you?

3. Make your site pop-up in a fixed size window using JavaScript

This is a requirement of any sucky Flash based website and if you want to make it that little bit worse please add scroll bars.

4. Always have an animation to “introduce” us to your site

There’s nothing more effective than a poorly animated, or better yet, extremely long “introduction” to a Flash based website to turn a user on. Not only do we enjoy watching it every time we come to the site, but we love it when the skip button doesn’t work.

5. Pre-load everything at once

To make the 5-10mb pre-loading worse, please add a flashing piece of text that spells out LOADING in the middle of your template. By the way, we don’t want to know how much is being loaded, how much has been loaded OR even see a loading bar… those are just ‘flashy’ and not informative to us users at all… right?

6. If not, don’t pre-load anything

As users we don’t like pre-loaders as they ‘slow us down’. Try creating a huge file size and not having a pre-loader, it makes us feel all tingly inside when we guess when the site will load.

7. Make sure that after 10 minutes of waiting, at least one more thing needs to be loaded

Make it the first thing we click on too. Make us really want it!

8. Always use a template

“Isn’t that a template?” – why yes it is. “Isn’t that used on this site, that site and that other one?” – why yes it is!

9. “Techno techno techno techno!” – make sure every piece of graphic on the site is overdone

Lines! We love lines! Why isn’t there more lines? Seriously, give us more lines or I’ll send someone round with a copy of ‘Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’ and make you watch it 15 times in a row with no toilet breaks.

10. Make sure nothing is compressed

We will wait 20 minutes to avoid that difference in quality only a 800% zoom would show us.

11. I shall not anti-alias my text

Readable text isn’t something users want, just ask all those people without screens.

12. Use circles for buttons

Yes circles are practically pointless as buttons, but they sure are curvy.

13. Make sure everything has a roll-over

Please don’t deprive us of this wonderful entertainment. I can from the bottom of my heart say you would be bringing down the web on a whole by removing these. If your site has less than five roll-overs you just aren’t doing it right.

14. Scrap the one click standard and go for five

There’s nothing more I like than clicking, and when I click on a button but have to click five times to make it work – that really makes my day.

15. If you have forms, make sure they are the default 500kb components

Think of default components as the oompa loompa’s in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. You don’t want them to go without a job do you?

16. If animating, always use at least fifteen flashes

KA POW! KA BLAM! It’s just like being in a Batman movie… and we all want to be in a Batman movie.

17. Use as many transitions as you can between content

Every time I see the text float in from the right or the left it makes me want to use Microsoft PowerPoint. And no-one should think of using Microsoft PowerPoint.

18. When tracing bitmaps, always leave the original source files to increase size

Small file size? That’s just for amateurs.

19. Make sure any music tracks aren’t compressed

It adds to that loading time, which gives us time to exercise our eyelids.

20. Music should always start over again when we switch page

“Check, check, check it out”. That pause was intentional and adds to the song – yours just ruins the site and your user’s opinion of the music being played.

21. And finally… make sure there’s very little point to you building your site in Flash

Make it look just like a normal site. Really surprise that user with the 15 minute techno remix of MC Hammer’s “Can’t touch this” when they first click a link. Even better, wait for them to let their guard down and show that video of you dancing to the latest Britney Spears CD in your underwear.

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Comments:

  1. Jay- Valid points. I just started playing around with flash a few weeks ago. I was wondering if you could post a link to the sites you’ve built. A demonstration of how flash should be used would be appreciated.

    Cheers.

  2. Hehe, I like the sarcasm

  3. Nice list!
    Totally got most of the fouls and mistakes of most of the Flash sites. What I don’t understand, is why people does “Flash” animated sites, when they’re all the same as static sites? For example no good anims, nothing special, and even it works like every other static site.

    Just hang on and don’t let anyone convince you, that you are not right about these things!

    W3B-DESIGN3RS UNIT3 FOR POW3R!

  4. maybe cuz they like the flash tools betta, eh?

  5. WOW, i think someone needs a Hug, but yea Flash should only be used if you have some experience with it.

  6. lol nice list man, a little biast but thats okay. I truly love flash sites, but what you list is very true for those little annoyances. HOWEVER flash sites let a designer enter a whole new 3D animated world that can be presented to you the user in unique and abstract ways. I’ve been doing flash for 3 years now and one thing I tell everyone, and quote me on this!

    ” If your going to do a 100% based flash site, then please offer the viewer an alternative 100% XHTML based site ”

    This way the viewer gets what he wants depending on his / her preferences. And for the love of god, please make your XHTML pages Strict! Hell if you can make it so it’s handi-accesible such as screen readers and .swf movie subtitles.W3C will love you for it! :)

  8. I agree with you about flash being a pain in the ass, and there are several that are done wrong.
    The problem is, as a graphic design student, and getting my degree in animation, they require you to use flash to build your portfolios. It is much easier to put on a disc and give out to potential employers than an html page.
    But in reality, you can do pretty much everything you can do in flash on an html page, but doing it in flash just makes it harder for idiots to try and steal your work and claim it as their own. So I am going with flash, which will hopefully be up in the next few days…~crosses my fingers~ my first site, I will admit, did suck. LOL

  9. LOL, you forgot one thing: Don’t embed the flash-app in a HTML page at all, just redirect the user to the .swf file.

  10. Hahaha, awesome:) Funny, but true..

  11. #22: Make a flash-based site.

  12. I like the sentence of Rick : “but doing it in flash just makes it harder for idiots to try and steal your work and claim it as their own”. And by the way, I am using flash, and it has put bread and wine on my table as well as beautifull women in my bed…Beeing a flash star is really really great ! I like html and I have nothing against CSS by the way !

  13. Great ^^
    I miss some more things though!

    - Add lots of loud and crappy music
    We all like music don’t we?

    - Give every mousover a blip sound, especially when you can’t click on it.
    What’s a web site without sound?

    - Make it load every single page on the site, and preferably give them all different music to enjoy us with your loading bar a little longer!

  14. All true, but not really funny… I mean, that’s like throwing some cheap happy slapping video where you and the victim are really acting and we can all see it. It’s just too obvious, can’t drive that much laughing. If anyone is stupid enough to follow more than one of your “how-to-make-my-web-suck” standards, then god have mercy on their souls. And flash based websites are gay btw.

  15. Nicely done and spot on! Keep up the good work. :)

  16. Yay my site fits pervectly!!!!

  17. This is just what I’ve been looking for!

    I’ve never made an entirely flash website before, I’ve considered it, but always thought: But what if it doesn’t suck enough?

    Now, with the help of your guide, I’ll be able to build sites that suck just as much as the many corporate flash based sites out there.

    Thank you!

  18. Nice..many things are true. Can’t get it why you blame roll-overs while you use it yourself though. I nice flash-site I like is “www.detektivbyran.net” even if the music starts over when you change page, heh heh.

  19. why can’t we go back to web 0.0001 beta when content was King. I curse the day when you could start embeding images!!!!!!!!

  20. Ok, sorry, but I think you’re just jalous to that renders on the splash page, and nice animations. Yea, 50% of what you’re saying is true, there are much n00bs in this WWW but there are very nice flashsites.

  21. Shouldn’t you have made this page in flash?

  22. thank you, thank you… someone who knows what he’s fucking talking about.

  23. rofl.. PWNed to all the n00b designers that do this.. :)) Nice job!

  24. Here is my Flash site. How much does this suck? It’s my first, so I’m sure it needs some improvement. Let me know… you should see my former employer’s site. It’s a disaster. They never even consulted me. “Oh, he just does 3D, he doesn’t know the web.” Freakin’ morons. I know enough about Dreamweaver not to fuck things this bad,

  25. Why would I want my website to suck in 21 different ways?

  26. I’d agree in some respects. I use flash daily for my job, & the truth is that there are some poorly created full flash sites on the net. I’d disagree that it’s easy to learn though & i think that is the problem – it’s easy to learn how to do things badly in flash, & there’s a much more steep learning curve to learning how to create a fluid, interactive site, which requires a good knowledge of actionscript – my first flash sites were poor in comparison to the work that i produce now.

    I’d say to anyone who does intend to build a full flash site – get some books first, look around the net for good tutorials – get some experience with the software first, try to keep your file size down, or load your movies in parts –
    try some imaginative pre loaders to keep the viewer interested. take a look at sites like thefwa.com for how to use flash properly.

    Use the forums that are available for flash to get good advice, & they are also good for feedback on your design before unleashing on the world.

    Flash has a major part to play on the web now & in the future, & used well it can & does make the user experience rich & entertaining.

    Used badly, it make people want to go to someone else’s site.

  27. IMO this seems more like another go with the whole “flash is so sucky and far to flashy” wave that’s been going, seems more to me that it is a popular opinion, and that many people agree just because of that.

    Personally i find that flash opens many more bounderies, and i also think that just because “noobs” make the mistakes you have mentioned here is not equivilant to all flash sites being like this.

    It’s like me ranting at all html sites for using tables, iframes, insted of etc etc. Yes some people might do this, but never the less this does not seem as a valid point or argument against the use of html.

    It’s a bit like saying, if we have freedom of speech, some people might abuse it and go on and offend everybody when they get the chance, therefore nobody should be allowed to say anything.

  28. hmm that messed up a bit as the tags i posted seemed to be removed – for format reasons i guess.

  29. Revolution!.. flash is kewl.. everybody has their own flavour right? :).. if you just look for entertainment flash rules.. if you look for information flash sucks and is a waste of time..

  30. dont forget, when your using a flash website 99% of the time the back and forward in youir browser wont work at all, instead taking you back to the last Non-flash page you visited, forcing you to reenter and go through THE ENTIRE EXPERIANCE again, but when your site looks that good they should be thanking you, not moaning about the poor design right?….

  31. Flash is evil, I curse when I have to enter a flash site, for 99% of the sites I have seen are anti-ergonomic and non-userfriendly.

    - Flash sites with tiny matchbox size windows that can not be resized and with matching miniature text that is barely readable (leaving the rest of your big screen unused)
    - Flash sites where you can not make a printout of not even the contact page
    - Flash sites where you have to manually copy even the email to write to the site owner
    - Flash sites with automatic music enabled (kill… kill…)
    - Flash sites with cumbersome navigation
    - Flash sites with stupid timewaster animations everywhere
    - Flash sites that garble information that needs to be printed out (Manuals, Reference Books) displayed as Flash instead of for example print friendly PDF.

    If I buy a book I want to read its content and not endlessly admire its bindings.

    What I want from a regular website: “get in”, “find it fast”, “order, buy, print-out, copy, etc. it”, “get out”, thank you very much.

  32. I can see that you really hate Flash, let’s try to be professional when we make statements about flash. First of all not all flash sites suck as not all HTML sites suck. I agree that 100% pure web pages can’t be properly optimized for search engines.

    My flash sites don’t go over 300kb because i optimize them as much as i can, i rarely use sounds and i try to keep the graphics to a minimal, i do excel at animations and i know that these are the spice to the web page.

    Flash pages aren’t all that bad you just turned them in to that, i could make a post with “21 ways (make that 999 ways) to make your HTML web page suck”, but that doesn’t prove a thing. I hate designers that ruin flash because they are too stupid to optimize, i hate graphic designers that don’t know a clue about design, i hate HTML coders that make the code so big and that load every script in the first HTML file only because they don’t know how to separate css and js from the HTML, i hate a lot of things.

    The truth is that there are good and bad web pages and you shouldn’t hit Flash Web Pages, you should instead discuss about the people that make them, flash web pages aren’t bad, stupid people that don’t know how to use flash and pretend to be allknowing should be shot.

    With respect, Alex

  33. Thanks for the list Jay. I’ll use this as a rubric for my next flash site to keep it original.

  34. I did notice that something was left out.
    Every single internet browser from webtv to the $30 pre-paid cell phone, to the worst internet explorer, written in the last 20 years have 3 things in common:
    they have a back button
    they have a stop button
    they have a refresh button
    (google it)
    Now that we know that every browser written in the last 20 years has these standard buttons, would one assume that by reviewing the history, that they are important to have, and if so, what is the reasoning behind this?
    To me, of course they are important, because it helps in navigating the internet. When some poor shlub decides that ‘flash is fun to use’, they tell every browser coder for the last 20 years, that they have no idea what they are doing when they wrote the programs!
    Why would anyone who has a brain, make a website where the basic functions of every browser are worthless?

    To alex.
    Your post shows exactly what jamie was saying.
    “… i do excel at animations and i know that these are the spice to the web page.”
    You are the ONLY ONE who thinks animations ‘spice’ up a website. They dont, they simply slow down the navigation. Why do i want to sit through 10 seconds of animations to get to something?
    You are exactly what is wrong with flash programmers. You think its neat and fun, but everyone visiting your site cannot stand it.

  35. I know the original post for this thread is 3 years old, however…after reading through the origninal post and numerous comments, I just have to add my 2 cents….

    To all the people making flash websites (even though they suck) please, please continue…the reason I say this is:

    (1) You learn a lot from your mistakes more so then your success’s
    (2) If the future of the internet remains HTML, I am going to go back to watching TV
    (3) How are we going to get to a virtual reality intenet system (you know like in Johhny Nemonic), without a flash foundation to start on, HTML just ain’t going to cut it…

    Something to think about when you have a nice buzz…your welcome

  36. Amazing post. And don’t worry dude, your sarcasm is really fun :)

  37. Thanks! This would serve as a good guide for me. Its like a list of Deady Sins in building a Flash based site.

Pingbacks/Trackbacks:

  1. 9th of March 2006

    21 ways to make your Flash based site suck…

    “I’m not a fan of ‘Flash based’ sites and the main reason for that is barely no-one does them properly. So here’s a list of 21 ways to make your Flash based site suck, so that the next time you build a Flash based site you can really hit that …

  2. 9th of March 2006

    [...] “I’m not a fan of Flash based sites and the main reason for that is barely no-one does them properly. So here’s a list of 21 ways to make your Flash based site suck, so that the next time you build a Flash based site you can really hit that nail on the head.”read more | digg story [...]

  3. 12th of September 2006

    Interesting topic… I’m working in this industry myself and I don’t agree about this in 100%, but I added your page to my bookmarks and hope to see more interesting articles in the future…

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  7. 27th of June 2009

    [...] View Tutorial No Comment var addthis_pub="izwan00"; BOOKMARK This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 7:29 am and is filed under Adobe Flash Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]

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