There’s an interesting little project called CSS Reboot that’s getting web designers together to “reboot” their websites on 1 May 2005, but to do so using CSS and web standards and generally accessible designs. It’s inspired by another project called The May 1st Reboot, which is also for web designers to reboot their websites on 1 May 2005, but the majority of the people participating there are people who use Flash to create sites.
The problem with Flash is that it’s often used badly, making websites a hodge-podge of different user interfaces and generally confusing the hell out of everybody. Take that May 1st Reboot front page as an example. It’s text and graphics and doesn’t need to be done in Flash. Simple HTML and CSS would have done the trick. Instead someone decided to make it all in Flash, which means that they had to reinvent wheels, like the scrollbar and a text box. Use HTML and CSS, and anybody can read the website. Blind people can access it via screen readers. People on cellphones can view it. People on old old computers can see it. Even grizzled greybearded Unix sysadmins using lynx can read it.
Flash is sort of slightly less secure than normal browsing, because there’s no way to know what URL you’re about to visit if you hover over a link. In normal browsing your status bar down at the bottom of the browser window shows you the URL, although this can be spoofed.
Flash also sucks complete ass on OS X, where its implementation causes the CPU in my PowerBook to fly to 100% usage, which makes the fans kick in and generally make too much noise.
Since I’ve been thinking about a redesign here for a while, I’m going to participate in the CSS Reboot. I have a design ready to go, I just need to make some tweaks to it to make sure it looks okay. Given that Alice and I are going to be on vacation from 5 April until 28 April (a day in Honolulu, five days in San Francisco, fifteen days in either Nanaimo or Victoria, then a day in Honolulu) I have to have something ready to go before then, so I guess I’m lucky that I have one pretty much ready now.
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