
6 Places that Flash Does Not Belong - nickb
http://www.wakeuplater.com/website-building/places-that-flash-does-not-belong.aspx
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ericb
This list should be a lot longer than 6. 

Sites you would like to load test or functional test with standard tools. 

Sites you would like the vision-impaired to use. 

Sites you would like to have a fully functional back button. 

Sites you would like to open source, as the tools to write flash cost
significant $. 

Sites users might like to copy and paste from. 

Sites where users might not have flash installed for security or other
reasons. 

Most websites not involving video or games. 

Note: if the flash is just a "garnish" some of the above do not apply. 

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Hexstream
A list of the few places where Flash _does_ belong would likely be more
effective and exhaustive. 

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marketer
This was a great article, from someone who clearly cares about usability and
customer satisfaction.  Although many of his points are arguable, it really
comes down to one thing: choosing the platform. 

Choosing a platform always has trade-offs, and the flash vs. html is no
exception.  When you decide on a platform for your application, it almost
always means your going to exclude users from accessing it.  I.E Windows
software is generally not usable in OSX or Linux, and Mozilla extensions are
not available from other web browsers. 

Another thing - people develop levels of comfort with platforms, and switching
can be a daunting experience.  It's hard for the average Windows user to switch
to Linux, because so many basic features of Windows are missing, and the user
experience is so different.  Same with flash vs. html - things like ctl+f don't
work, text highlighting is different, the presentation is not as familiar. 

Any smart person will consider these platform trade-offs when developing an
application.  You might lose some users, but I think people appreciate high-
quality applications with good UIs.  I don't mind waiting a few seconds to see
a beautiful flash site to load (www.schematic.com, for instance). 

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mpk
Let's add 'a public website' to the list.  The Flash runtime is proprietary and
simply isn't available for many environments. 

Opera on the Wii ships with Flash 8, but many new Flash video players use
Flash 9.  There is also no decent Flash build for many unix varieties,
including 64-bit linux. ( Yes you can install 32-bit libraries to get the
32-bit version running, but come on ..)

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hernan7
The "E-commerce" entry left me flabbergasted. 

Do some developers really think that people want to drag-and-drop stuff into
their shopping carts? 

Maybe I am too used to sensible on-line shops...

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dangoldin
In any case, that can easily be done in JS.