ClickToFlash – dumb-is-good

A while back I made a decision to stay away from using any Flash in building this web site…

I am deliberately avoiding the use of Flash. The misuse of flash in web sites is responsible for some of the most ridiculous, frustrating and avoidable usability issues. So, dumb-is-good could be the motto here.

So I was pleased to see the new ClickToFlash plugin for Safari today and tried it out straight away. It elegantly blocks those shitty flash impositions all over the web. You gotta be happy with that and because NetNewsWire on the Mac uses WebKit, the plugin works there too – twice as little flash trash has got to be even better.

I guess it’s not Flash that’s the problem really, it’s the crazy overuse of it ruining user interaction that gets me. I know there are sites that are totally Flash driven that will just be blocked but then I generally loose interest in them in a few seconds anyway. I’m sure in a few days I’ll find a number of situations where having Flash blocked will be a pain… but I’ll give it a go.

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