Do you remember the day when it was cool to have a Flash intro on your home page? All the creative people were trying to outdo each other and to come up with more and more complex animations, spiced up with sound effects and music that would enforce the visitors impression about the owner’s good taste.
I can see you’re nodding… Those were the days…
But than, people started complaining about the background music, and would find it too intrusive. Music got muted by default and sound effects slowly, but steadily disappeared as an accessory for web design. It didn’t took too long to realize, except all the self-absorbed “geniuses” and misguided clients, that Flash intros are a huge waste of time, they are not accessible and have zero SEO value, not to mention the high bounce rates.
Good!
The other day I clicked a link shared by a friend on Facebook, it was the portfolio of a photographer with a series of images shot in India. It was done with Flash, the fancy way, I could click back and forth, there was even a full screen mode or I could just sit back and let the slideshow play. I did not had a lot of time, I wanted to quickly go trough the images, but I couldn’t. The pictures would appear one after another, with a loading counter between them, but what I wanted to have a general view and not to be forced to wait.
Today there are less and less devices that play Flash, even Adobe stopped developing the mobile version, so why put your eggs in a basket that is sinking?
Ah the good old “skip intro” page.
So called as a web designer friend was once asked by a client to add a “skip intro” page at the front end of their website.