Mats has some valid points about context menus and other built in browser features. I am starting to add more context menu options to the Flash sites that I work on. Selecting text, right-clicking and looking up with a dictionary is very doable. It’s also possible to hook up social interactivity into context menus with Flash. Many times though Flash sites are trying to be overly user friendly and have all the functionality integrated into the UI.

If I were to build a site that had a ton of text and required browser functionality, Jason has a good point too, we would just build it in HTML. We try to choose the best technology for the project and keep all the Flash for what Flash does best, which is, bring an immersive interactive experience to the web using graphics, designer fonts, animation, video, music and sound effects.

I guess it would be cool to have bookmark functionality to a game, but I can see that being hard to do with HTML5 as well. If you have a bunch of states in an app, wether HTML or Flash, you have to add linking functionality to the app. The basic browser functionality reloads the page and if you want anything else, you have to build it yourself. We have implemented some really cool projects with deep-linking with Flash and Flex that work with the browser’s history, forward and back buttons. Many developers just don’t thing about it, trying to keep all the functionality front and center in the app itself. We could do better making Flash apps more browser friendly, it is extra work and normally over looked.

Thanks again for your comments.

Let me take it back a step here. I’m not condoning Flash, for Flash’s sake. That’s where I think your gripes lie right?

Flash, when used right (ie. to power the millions of videos now available BECAUSE of it’s ubiquity) or the multitude of RIA’s (that were made possibly by clever developers using Flex/Flash and a hint of javascript) don’t rely on the same browser ecosystem that you seem to be so hell bent on preserving.

I used the term “rabbiting on” as it seems that you aren’t getting the point of this blog post (which incidentally isn’t even mine, but g’day to whoever it is that started it ;-) I agree with what your saying about usability issues, I just don’t see how that fits into the context of the original link, and the demos of Flash that it contains. If I wanted to create a site that:

- allowed a user to open a link in a new window/tab (via ctrl-click)
- allow the user to Select text (which is kinda easily done in Flash, just whether the developer enables it)
- right click and via a context menu allow a selected word to be searched on wikipedia or google in a new tab

well guess what, I could use Flash. But if you were the client, and you were telling me that it absolutely had to have these requirements, then I could certainly do it using HTML.

The point is, I’ve got a choice.

That’s something that I like. And I guess I’m going into bat for all those poor hapless iDevice users that don’t have that same choice.

* Opening a link in a new window/tab has nothing to do with plugins.

* Selecting text, or anything and doing something with it CAN be used by plugins, but has nothing to do with any specific plug-in, Its a browser thing.

* Opening links or using the browsers menu that way is not something just “power users” do, if you think that you must not think much of your users.

Playing nice with the browser IS a good thing for content that is to be displayed in a browser to do BY DEFAULT , not something that MIGHT be a good thing and could possibly perhaps maybe be added if enough people are “rabbiting on about” it.

Imagine if all web-developers thought like that:
- Doing something with the content one a web page that i haven’t thought of (like selecting a word in my brochure to look it up) , why on EARTH would anyone want to do that?
- Well i suppose i could allow it if enough people sign some kind of petition or something, but till then ill assume no one cares.

I find THAT way of doing things bizarre.

And how do you KNOW “no one cares” about stuff like opening links in new windows/tabs?
Has anyone for example ever measured how many users tries in vain to ctrl+click on links on flash sites that doesn’t support this?
Relying on whether anyone complains or not to gauge if something works is useless, since no complaints can just a s well mean that the thing is so bad that no one bothers complaining, thinking it would be like suggesting polishing a turd.
I know that’s how i think whenever i forget myself and try to do things on a flash site: “aha its flash! oh well, never mind then..”

Using flash to add functionality to web pages is perfectly fine by me, but removing working existing functionality like an -tag and replacing it with half assed versions is a bad idea.

And nope i have never gone to Chalmers, My name is fairly common in Sweden.

WTF, that’s a pretty bizarre angle to come at for why you think Flash is no good…

You sound like you’re a power user – and more power to you. But your hang ups regarding Flash really have nothing to do with the whole HTML5 argument that’s going on at the moment.

I imagine you’ve got a Flash blocker installed, so you’re probably not seeing any of the Flash content that is actually out there – but if you were, you’d realise that they’re not exactly the type of sites that you need to be right clicking and selecting to search for the bit of text that you’ve just highlighted in Google… if you desperately wanted that functionality, the thing is, I could knock it up in Flash and release it as an open source library that anybody could integrate into their site. The reason I haven’t (nor has anyone else as far as I can tell) is – nobody seems to care about the functionality you’re rabbiting on about!

Anyways, you’ve got your opinions on Flash, I’ve got mine.

P.S. completely off topic, but are you the Mats Svensson that went to Chalmers tekniska högskola by chance?

But html websites are.
So why limit yourself, and your visitors?

And im “hung up about ” context menus, drag and drop, links etc, because these things just doesn’t work in flash sites.
To me, if something doesn’t work, it should be fixed.
Im odd that way i guess.

You say these things DO work in fllash?
OK, I DARE you to show me even ONE single flash site where the links has at least the functionally of even the simplest hello world html page, or where i can select a bit if text and pop up a context menu with for example the search options i get when i do the same on a html page.
( i have “search with Google”, Wikipedia and a bunch others i like)

Should be easy right, with all those robust toolsets etc around.

And nope, i don care one bit about any battles between Jobs and whoever, or between different technologies.
I just want the web pages i visit to work well.

HTML5, 6 or 7 is NOT going to supplant that. (I’m making this slightly wild accusation based on the 10 years it’s taken us to get from HTML4 to 5, and the lack of standards the browsers actually adhered to – I guess you’re only as good as your last innings right?)

As for things JUST working in the browser – when done right, Flash offers just a good a experience as any pure HTML site out there. Not sure why you’re so hung up about context menus and being able to drag and drop either. Both of these work just fine in Flash – again, perhaps focus on the Technology not how it’s used and the debate might be able to move forward.

The points you’re making may have been a good debate 5 years ago, but things have moved on now. Rich internet applications, video (that you can rely on working across ALL platforms), a robust coding language and a massive toolset for developers is where the battle will be won or lost. And right now, Flash has been doing all of those things and more for many years.

That you can use flash to make web pages that look pretty, and that with a little work you can make them go trough some of the motions masquerading as a real web page, but that you can forget about having basic webpage-functionality like handling links or context because that was just part of “the frame” anyway, not the content?

These things JUST work in even the simplest html-pages that any noob can cobble together, and the he/she doesn’t have to do a thing to make it work , it JUST works.
In fact you have to go out of your way to block things like context-menus and link opening, drag&drop etc.

So far i haven’t seen a single flash-page where things like this works at all.
(id love to see one, if anyone has a link)

The point is that you get this functionality for free when you build in html , but it costs in work when you build in flash, and therefore the user can kiss it goodbye.

Yes the demos look very pretty, im not denying that.
But for making web pages for viewing, and interacting with, in a browser, flash isn’t even in the race.