If you’ve tried browsing the internet from an iPhone, iPod Touch or, for those lucky early adopters who got their hands on one, an iPad, you’ve come across scenarios where you are faced with the blue Lego block from hell.
For those who haven’t seen this little bugger, this little symbol represents web content that has been developed in flash.
Here is an article that I just read this morning:
And this is what it was supposed to look like on a regular browser:
As you can see, I miss out on the video on this page using an iPhone, but I have no idea that this is what is missing unless I go back to the site using a different browser.
This got me wondering about how many people are having this issue so I checked the stats for this site. Looking only at visitors to this site who are using an iPhone or iPod Touch (It’s a little early to hope for iPad visitors!), I can say that, for sure, 18% of my traffic cannot see flash.
And that 18% is not counting visitors using software like Click to Flash on a Mac, intended only to view flash when it is needed rather than letting it eat up your battery power and CPU usage while slowing your web browsing experience.
My point is this: If any publisher knows that up to 18% of their users will have a crappy experience every time they see the blue Lego block from hell, why not put steps in place to ensure that there is an alternative?
The advertising community has come up with a brilliant solution to this problem. You will notice in both of the above sceenshots that the advertising banner and box ads show just fine. This is not rocket science, this is a policy put in place by an advocacy group (e.g. in Canada the IAB) that insists that all campaigns running flash provide a backup gif or jpg image that can be served in it’s place for users that do not have the flash plugin.
How hard is that? If a publisher absolutely has to have their precious flash, why not put some kind of backup to ensure that those of us who have chosen incompatible devices are able to either see what we are missing out on or, even better, offer us an alternate experience.
I think that this whole argument will be moot in a few years. I’m in the camp that wants to see the use of flash for published content go the way of the Dodo.
I know that sounds somewhat hypocritical given the sexy flash Tag Cloud you see to the right if you are not visiting on an iDevice, but you should be aware that the folks visiting us from an iDevice see a normal Tag Cloud that gives credit to the developers of the sexy flash Tag Cloud if they are using this full site. Alternatively, I have provided iDevice users the option of an iDevice optimized site that delivers only HTML content to ensure super quick load times.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that flash has it’s uses. I love flash for advertising purposes because it allows a single file to be served quite simply and, with the backup strategy already in place, quite effectively to all kinds of devices and browsers. I just think that publishers need to be cognizant of the fact that they are alienating a portion of their visitors by providing crappy user experiences.
I know that I am, and will continue to be, more loyal to sites that are aware of me and that cater to me as a visitor.
