99% Bad

In late 2000, Jakob Nielsen wrote an influential essay regarding the use of Flash titled Flash: 99% Bad. In it, Nielsen berates Flash as a "usability disease," noting designers mostly use Flash for gratuitous animation, frivolous introductions, and nonstandard GUI layouts. He also rebukes uses of Flash that ignore usability standards, disregard disability access and render browser features like 'find' worthless. Lastly, he asserts that having a Flash website takes away from the site's purpose, citing that Flash content is not frequently updated, nor helps customers find needed information.

This caused outrage among designers, especially designers who embraced the creative side of Flash. Usability advocates fully supported what Nielsen wrote, and clashed with the designers. Designers felt that usability held back their creativity, while usability advocates saw creative Flash use as unusable. Flash developer Andreas Heim stated, "A great user experience starts when people who visit a website are easily able to complete the task for which they came-and then want to come back for more" (Blank et al.). Most design-driven Flash programs did not follow this advice.

The Great Debate

Wiebe Bijker has stated, "A given technology or technological artifact can have simultaneously held and equally valid interpretations at any given historical juncture" (Haas 223). He goes on to explain that while someone may see a tool as valuable, others may not share that interpretation. The Flash usability debate was one of these times.

The creative types who wanted to use Flash to make an expressive website embraced the program for allowing them to make what they envisioned. Usability experts did not agree with this interpretation and shunned Flash for breaking the rules of the internet. But it wasn't the fault of Flash that it was being misused -- it was simply a tool. However, Macromedia needed to step in and make sure people used the tool properly (Ankerson).

This heated debate lasted for two years before Macromedia started intervening: "When the critiques of gratuitous, excessive Flash grew louder..., Macromedia intensified their efforts to change the story of Flash on two visible fronts. First, to directly address usability and accessibility critiques, the company made a strategic decision to focus Flash on applications development rather than animation....Second, Macromedia dealt with Nielsen's vocal critiques by hiring him as a usability consultant" (Ankerson 326).

Macromedia released tutorials on how to use Flash with usability in mind. Designers heeded these tutorials, and began to use Flash in more accessible and understandable ways. New features were also added to Flash, such as support for streamed video. Flash was becoming more than just a tool,

Flash was now a development environment with support for handling video and dynamic content and was used on photo and video sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube. In 2005, the software company Adobe bought Macromedia and integrated the Flash and Dreamweaver tools with Adobe's image and video editing suites. While Web 2.0 emerged from the ashes of the dot-com crash, the Flash sites of Web 1.0 largely dissolved into the digital ether. (Ankerson 328)

With this transformation, Flash took off in a whole different direction, with creative design taking a backseat and functionality taking the wheel.

A Stream of Success

As Flash entered its 10th year in 2006, the program had over 700 million installations ("Adobe"). The technology was heavily adopted by a wide range of newly-formed video streaming services. This feature of the technology was so popular, Adobe was awarded an Emmy for the use of its technology to bring television online.

"Flash Video is fundamentally changing the role of video on the Internet, and this prestigious award is further proof of this technology's profound impact on how broadcasters deliver their content," said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief operating officer at Adobe. "ABC and NBC and pop culture phenomena like YouTube and MySpace are relying on Adobe technologies to reach new audiences. Winning this Emmy is deserved recognition for our engineering teams and Adobe's continued commitment to innovation in dynamic media." ("Adobe")

Adobe was ready and armed to take on Web 2.0 and all the devices of the future.

The outlook for Flash seemed bright.