13 replies to this topic

[Edvin Eshagh]

Greetings all,

A classmate commented that he has observed 9 out of 10 websites are in flash (no its not a homework)!

I feel that maybe 1 out 20 websites is in flash (even then, it's not all flash site); however, I'm wondering if anyone has seen any statistics on percentage of flash versus Html sites.

If you don't know of any stats, I would be grateful if you could share your opinion on number of websites that you feel are in flash.

Please do not count advertising banners as a flash websites; however I think we can have two categories:
1) All flash website
2) Sprinkle of flash in an HTML website.

tnx

[nethy]

Definitely not 9/10. But I think you need to figure out what you are asking. 'number of websites' is not a very interesting number. Most sites are irrelevant because very few people encounter them. 'number of new websites' might be of interest if you're in the business of making them (9/10 sites are flash sites. We need to start making flash sites...).
In a similar way you could say that most blogs have bad grammer, poor writing & are read by no one. That might lead you to believe you can comment on blogs based on median quality. A mistake

I thin k that the interesting question is how much content consumption is in flash. A lot of video content is in flash. A substantial minority of still images are displayed within flash (flash image galleries, etc.). Some tools, dynamic graphs, calculators, games etc. is flash. This latter is being usurped by more sophisticated html/javascript content. Very little textual content is or ever was consumed as flash.

Apart from video, Flash makes up a small part of online content consumption.

[Edvin Eshagh]

Thank you for your feedback nethy.

I was hoping to get more feedback from community.
I guess, no one has a good response or has an interested in this thread.

[Randy]

Well, if you want more feedback my impression is the 9/10 figure is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too high.

My sense is that maybe 1 out of 100 have some flash content, and even them it's usually only a flash header or some minor bit of content that's in flash. Probably less than 1 in 100, but hey it's a guess.

For sites that are pure flash, I' d put it at more like 1 in 100,000 or more. Higher if I had to guess.

Of course I don't have any stats to back this up. Just that since I converted my main system over to XP 64 bit several months ago I notice it a bit more. There is no 64 bit Flash plugin currently, so I get an error message in my normal browser if there's any flash at all on a page, and in fact have no way of seeing that portion of the page in my IE7 x64. If I want to see flash I need to open the page/site in my IE x32, Firefox (32 bit), Netscape (32 bit), Safari (32 bit) or Chrome (32 bit).

I run into the error message very, very infrequently in my surfing. And when I do it's not usually an essential part of the page/site.

[Jill]

I guess, no one has a good response or has an interested in this thread.

As nethy already mentioned, you need to clarify you question before we can provide a comment.

Do you mean the number of sites that are ALL flash, or the number of sites that have SOME flash elements on them?

These are two different things, with the latter being a much higher number.

[Edvin Eshagh]

As nethy already mentioned, you need to clarify you question before we can provide a comment.

Do you mean the number of sites that are ALL flash, or the number of sites that have SOME flash elements on them?

These are two different things, with the latter being a much higher number.

Hi Jill,

I'm trying to understand percentage of sites that rely on flash to increase user experience (visually or functionally).
This can be a simple logo animation, product demo, full flash website, etc (excluding partner or affiliate marketing flash banners).
This means that all types of sites should be considered (forums, blogs, youtube video, etc. ).


"Adobe claims that 98 percent of US Web users and 99.3 percent of all Internet desktop users have the Flash Player installed" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash)
Okay! What percentage of Internet websites make use of flash (any opinion in any area is welcome).

[Randy]

Far less than Adobe's self-serving market penetration number.

FTR, Adobe says the same kind of thing with Acrobat. And in both cases it's largely because they've cut deals with computer manufacturer's to pre-install their software when the computer is built. Nothing wrong with this btw, but I can tell you for a fact that the pre-installed version of Acrobat many major computer manufacturer's use are nothing near the full install version of even the free Acrobat Reader software. I've been dealing with that one for a few years now.

I doubt you're going to find any reliable information regarding the number of sites that use Flash. Somebody would have to crawl every single page of every single site in the entire world, with a bot that could recognize Flash. Adobe won't do that because they have their market penetration number to fall back on. The other number would pale in comparison. Nobody else has an good reason to take on such a project.

Regardless, if you're looking for number of sites that use Flash for the purpose you stated --to increase or improve user experience-- it's a couple of years late to be looking into it. Flash is old school. The cutting edge sites are using things like Ajax to improve user experience.

[Edvin Eshagh]

I was hoping that someone working in a reasonable size ISP, might be able to scan for existence flash SWF file per website. Though the result is likely to be biased, it is at least a statistical sample that would give us a ball park figure.

I guess we have to settle with not knowing the answer

Randy and Nethy, thank you for sharing your ideas.

[1dmf]

Well as far as i'm concerned any amount is too many! I hate flash sites....

Ok a bit strong, it used to be the case for every site that used flash when we all still had a modem, man those sites were sooo slooooow, I'd need a shave by the time they loaded!

These days I hate it coz it's mainly used for either advert banners, logos / page headers or those damn annoying doorway pages, you wait 2 minutes for the page to load just for it to do some stupid animation of the the word 'click here to enter' , I mean WTF is that all about!

The only flash site that I thought wow - nice job! is beatport.com , ok the lime green is a bit pukey , but the interface worked, the downloads are fast, even your download history all works fine.

It's been taken over by a lot of band / artist adverts and as I've lost the love to DJ of late I haven't purchased anything in months, so not sure if anythig has changed lately.

But that has to be the only flash site i've ever stayed more than 2 minutes on!

And seings as (like Randy) I run Windows Vista x64 , in over 3 years of access to an x64 bit OS's STILL there is no Flash plugin, though not sure how Randy got chrome to run flash, I kept trying to install it on Chrome but it just never worked so gave up.

Edited by 1dmf, 18 September 2008 - 04:19 AM.

[Randy]

Offtopic

I cheated 1dmf. With a 3rd party, open source flash player no less! Though I've still not gotten IE7 x64 to recognize and use it.

[1dmf]

lol - you're a one aren't you Randy, giving people false hopes that Chrome might actually work with Adobe Flash Player.

I thought I was doing something stupid like usual, at least I know now I wasn't!

[Randy]

Offtopic

Well, truth be told I didn't install it for chrome or even with chrome. I'd installed it hoping to get Flash working with my IE x64, but IE won't recognize it. Chrome apparently picked up that the plugin was already installed when I installed the browser and automatically used it as my Flash viewer. All I knew was Flash worked in my Chrome, until I looked more closely to see what was actually playing the flash.

[mcanerin]

The problem with the question, is that the answer I would give you would not answer what I think you need to know. So I'm going to change the question, then answer it

The thing is, that the aggragate information for this question isn't useful information - it's like asking what percentage of humans buy bras. I imagine there may be a few men and children in there, but in reality, you are really asking what percentage of women buy them - follow me?

For Flash use, it's about money, competition and emotion. Which in turn translates into niche.

Flash use in the travel destinition niche is upwards of 80%+
Flash use in fashion nears 90%
Flash use in PHP Programming sites is probably significantly less than 5%

Flash is really good at selling a small variety of something based on emotional appeal - less than a dozen choices based on beautiful scenery, blending music and motion, etc. Niches that are monetized by this type of marketing tend to use flash a lot.

Likewise, Flash is bad at presenting a lot of data. It's much easier to use long pages of HTML, search results, large catalog pages and so on for this type of marketing.

If you find yourself in a niche (like a department store selling clothes - a mix of lots of data but also fashion) that requires both an appeal to emotion and data management, you tend to use a basic data system, but then add Flash inside that data (much as you would add an image) to attempt to combine both worlds. Many entertainment blogs fit into this category.

So really, your answer depends on the niche you are focused on. If you want to SEO in the travel or fashion industry, you'd better get used to SEO'ing Flash sites. These sites will not abandon their ability to convert their emotional visitors into buyers just because you want to send more traffic to them. It's about sales, not hits. They know this very well.

On the other hand, I've seen a lot of sites that *should* be data-driven sites (like travel booking sites that are selling cheap tickets to places people have already decided to go to) get confused and use Flash when they should not, because they were either sold a bill of goods by a design firm or because they don't realize that although people may make a decision to visit a place due to emotion (Paris! It's so beautiful!), they don't always book based on emotion (Another damn business meeting in Paris. Let me find a cheap flight here...).

In short, what you really need to know is a breakdown of Flash use within the niche you are working in, not Flash use in general. For example, Flash use for mobile sites is almost zero, because most mobile devices don't support Flash right now. Flash use for photography portfolio sites (which also use Flash to stop people from easily stealing their images) is probably closer to 95%.

I hope that helps, even though it's not a direct answer to your question. I suspect that you and your friend tend to visit different types of sites (them entertainment/fashion/travel/etc, and you the more techie ones), thus accounting for the difference in perception of the use of Flash. You are both right - within your preferred niches.

Ian

Edited by mcanerin, 18 September 2008 - 11:11 AM.

[Edvin Eshagh]

Thank you for your feedback Ian.