Important Reasons to Eliminate Flash on Your Website

Once upon a time, Flash was revolutionary, and really the kind of thing that you absolutely wanted powering your site’s design.

That time was 1996. Interactive web graphics were in their advent and Adobe Flash (which went by a different name at the time) was state of the art.

But the year is 2020, and Flash Player is a quickly diminishing shadow of itself. If you’re in the process of creating a website, and no one has given you this advice yet, then let us be the first to say: Don’t use Flash on your website. Here are three simple reasons why:

Because It’s Going Away in Late 2020

In fact, it’s been on its way out since 2007, the year Apple launched iOS. Apple caught flack for not supporting Flash on the revolutionary new iPhone, since so many websites were still dependent on it at the time. But the company held its ground. Flash was resource-intensive and not well-suited to mobile computing. Today, a little more half of all web traffic is through mobile devices.

Now, iOS and Android, the two most popular mobile operating systems, do not support Flash by default. Neither do most of the top web browsers.

By Dec. 31, 2020, Adobe Systems will officially drop all support for Flash, meaning no more distribution and no more security updates. When this happens, all browsers – even the last remaining holdouts – will officially drop the option of support for Flash. If your site is still powered by flash by then, you’re going to have a really tough time getting anyone to your site at all.

There Are Better Alternatives

Really, reason No. 1 should be enough.

But in case it isn’t, the open standard HTML5 has been available since the late 2000s. It is far more resource efficient, supports responsive design by default and delivers the same interactive functionalities … for free.

By the way, if you need help converting Flash to HTML5, Black Raven Digital is at your service.

Security Issues Galore

Firstly, with Adobe dropping support for Flash, there will be no more security updates for the platform – which is notoriously plagued by vulnerabilities.

Secondly, Flash has been, well, notoriously plagued by vulnerabilities. Thousands of severe security threats have been discovered on Adobe Flash in the past 10 years, many of which have led to countless breaches and malware intrusions.

Meaning – Flash wasn’t safe 10 years ago, and it won’t be safe going forward.