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Adobe Flash Player is obsolete

Following a number of discussions with new customers, I felt it was important to reiterate the facts about Flash technology.

Flash... This technology, which is as old as the Internet itself, was invented by Adobe in the 1990s and developed rapidly, to the point where in the 2000s it became one of the most widely used technologies for designing websites. Numerous web agencies have capitalized on this technology by offering services based on flash player technology. Unfortunately, this invention did not evolve with the times, and soon began to offer more disadvantages than advantages.

Prison entertainment

First of all, we need to look at the structure to understand the harm it does: Flash is nothing more than an animation, enclosed between four delimitations and impenetrable to search engines. Because of the illegibility of the characters (which are in fact more images than letters), Google and others have no idea what your website actually contains! For them, your site is just a domain name with some kind of animation on top. A dark, unreadable corner.

The SEO nightmare

Because of its nature, a flash site cannot be well referenced on search engines. Full stop. And this is all the more true given that technology is evolving at a rapid pace and that Google is constantly updating its alogithm to move away from this type of site and favour the mobile-compatible sites.

  • When search engines do not detect the content of a website, they will not display the website in their list of results for a large number of keywords, even if your site corresponds to these keywords.
  • The same applies to referencing via URLs: search engines attach great importance to words in the URL bar as well as words in menus and sub-menus (e.g. when you access my offer page for the creation of a website: https://hotel-webdesign.com/services/creation-site-internet/ This clearly reveals the words "creation", "site" and "internet" in the URL, which helps Google to understand the associated content). However, a flash site will only be available under a single URL. It is therefore impossible to save a particular page on the site, to see it in the history or to have it referenced.
  • Elements such as a possible translated version the site and links to networks social are not optimally displayed on a Flash site, which further increases the risk of non-indexing.

Farewell to low-speed visitors and mobile users

  • Flash player is a pluginwhich is unfortunately not available with all web browsers. For some people, such as mobile users, the site is simply not viewable in its current state, unless an independent mobile version has been created in parallel.
  • The Flash animation must load in the browser before it can be viewed. For a low-speed Internet user, this can mean several tens of seconds loading time, more than enough time for them to turn to another website. The site will also be much larger than a Worpdress site for similar content.
  • Finally, this technology is less and less updated by the parent company (Adobe), which represents a non-negligible risk for website security.

 

You can also consult my advice page on hotel marketing

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2019

In 2019, websites using Flash Player will stop working for good.

80

From 2014 to 2018, the use of flash player was reduced by 80% on the web.

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