July 22nd, 2008 by Jemaleddin Cole

People love lists. They never want to read an arti­cle about how to actu­ally do any­thing: They want to read the 10 ways to do it. Or the 5 worst places to be when they’re doing it. Or the 3 most famous people that ever did what­ever it is they want to know about doing. Fine. I’ll play along.

Here’s the Top 1 Web Nav­i­ga­tion Design Tips: Don’t use Flash for navigation.

See what hap­pened here?

I just wanted to open New Balance’s “Where to Buy” link in a new tab. But what do I get instead? The Flash right-​click menu. And it’s not even as though the link does some­thing inside the flash movie: it takes me to an entirely dif­fer­ent page on the site! So why can’t I open it in a new tab? Because - and this is me guess­ing - they really loved moving the words I was trying to click on 5 pixels to the right.

But look: I’m not some anti-Flash curmudgeon! I love Youtube as much as the next guy. Hell, I’ve done my time build­ing Flash sites. Some of the nifty stuff Chad and I were doing 8 years ago still isn’t common prac­tice today. So believe me when I tell you: there’s a time and a place for Flash. This just isn’t it.

So here’s the deal, my designer friends: I’m not buying your shit when you inter­fere with using the browser the way it’s meant to be used. I’m done putting up with your bogus non-​standard nav­i­ga­tion. You’ve lost my busi­ness. How hard can it be to remem­ber one rule?

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website