flash

Flash is Finished

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For years – since 2007, at least – we’ve been encouraging people to drop Flash. We haven’t built a Flash site in the last five years, and several of our projects have involved rebuilding websites we’ve already designed in Flash, long ago, so that they’re friendlier to modern web browsing expectations. (Our redesign of Masu Sushi‘s website is a good example.)

So the news was not much of a surprise to us today: Adobe Flash Meets Its End. Adobe officially announced today that they’re no longer developing Flash for mobile devices. You could argue that Steve won, but we think everybody won. We doubt it will be long before Adobe stops developing Flash altogether. The writing has been on the wall for years.

The Importance of Restaurant Website Mobility

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There are many reasons that you should not ever put your restaurant website in Flash. We explore but a few.

This past Saturday, Ray and I had the rare opportunity to have breakfast out alone together without our toddler. Needless to say, we were thrilled. We remembered a particularly enjoyable breakfast we had months ago with friends at Simpatica Dining Hall, jumped in the car, and headed over. Part way there, we realized that we hadn’t checked their hours and pulled up their website on an iPhone. This is what came up.

When we arrived at the restaurant, we discovered Simpatica is only open for brunch on Sunday (their blog makes this obvious, but there was no link to the blog on my phone) and so we embarassingly walked into a restaurant that was being set-up for a catering event.

We’re not trying to point fingers at this restaurant. We love their food and everything they stand for. Instead, this serves as a reminder and a perfect example of how important it is to consider how customers interact with your website.

We’ve talked mobile restaurant websites before and we may start to sound like a broken record, but restaurant websites (in particular) that ignore mobile devices are doing their customers and their business a huge disservice. And designers that offer flash websites to restaurants… well, just don’t get me started.

Here’s the deal: Before Apple introduced the iPhone mid-2007, Flash websites were an attractive online option. Four years later, with Apple platforms like the iPad and iPhone, technology has evolved and enabled anyone to access the internet anywhere at any time. This changes the name of the game. Since Apple doesn’t install Adobe’s Flash onto their mobile devices, websites that are presented in Flash are completely inaccessible to iPhone/iPad users (and let’s face it, who doesn’t have an iPhone nowadays).

You work hard to satisfy your customers and send them rushing home to write winning reviews on your excellent service and drool-worthy faire. And, in foodie capitols like Portland, diners are usually on the go and use apps like Yelp and AroundMe to look up reviews and find directions to the best restaurants near by. When your stars are shining bright on those review sites, and hungry customers can’t click fast enough to learn more about you, how disheartening is it when they find out their iPhone can’t access your location, hours or menu? Who wants to lose business to a website that is inaccessible on your customers’ mobile device?

“In The Courgette Restaurant Website Survey, more than 80% of customers stated that they have visited a restaurant website on their mobile device,” says restaurant marketing website, The Blackboard. “This reason alone should probably be enough to avoid Flash.”

Finally, as designers, we believe it is our job to stand up and give you our expert opinion. There is no excuse anymore for creating Flash sites for restaurants. We know the facts about their ineffectiveness and we understand the harm to your business by creating them. We also believe in educating our clients, so in the end, everyone’s happy. Especially your customers.

Form & Flora

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We’ve recently launched a new website for Portland’s Form & Flora. Lacy Lowery is both a floral and interior designer and so we focused on the intersection of these vocations: natural materials, texture and color. As flowers change from season to season, Lacy’s home page is a captivating (and easy to change) montoge of the shapes and colors of now.

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We hope you’ll stop in for a while and enjoy a glimpse through Lacy’s gorgeous creations (her designs have been gracing Needmore’s studio for months now).

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Jason Oranzo

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We’ve just released a delightfully fun and whimsical site for the fabulously talented Jason Oranzo. Jason is a designer’s dreamboat client, with an enthusiasm for creating art for his site and a sense of fun about the project. All of Jason’s navigation is hand-penned (and Needmore recorded some honest to goodness sharpie and eraser sounds).

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Jason’s illustration portfolio is so colorful and entertaining, our primary goal was to focus on his work and let his site get out of the way! We hope you’ll take some time to peruse Jason’s site. Although he’s created pieces for clients as varied as J.Crew to Phish, some of our favorite of Jason’s work comes from his playful and personal print collection.

Flash and the iPhone

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I think that Apple made the right decision, as a company, to exclude Flash from the iPhone. And this is coming from someone who largely develops Flash websites for a living! But let me explain a bit more about my thoughts.

When we develop Flash websites, we typically fix our designs on a dimension that is intended to fit the sweet spot that the largest number of computer configurations, including the largest percentage of host operating systems, largest percentage of screen sizes, and largest percentage of Flash versions are comprised of. These are very much designs that are squarely aimed at “the average PC.” And why shouldn’t we? We want as many folks as possible to be able to enjoy a Needmore site.

When faced with a mobile device, with a dramatically different screen size and category of hardware, you just can’t possibly see the same thing. There aren’t enough pixels, and with many of our designs, every pixel really does count. You wouldn’t be able to read the text without a lot of pinching and zooming. No fun.

This is precisely what the QuickTime video experience on the iPhone circumvents. The most popular use of Flash on the Internet is for video (YouTube alone probably seals the deal here), it is almost the “Microsoft of the in-browser video experience.” Would it really be in Apple’s best interest even to allow this to extend to the new category of mobile devices that they themselves are pioneering?

Apple aims for the high end, as a company. They have brought the best quality of all kinds of media to the largest number of people in the history of computing, between their QuickTime technologies, the iTunes Music Store, and their affiliations (via Steve Jobs) to the entertainment industry at large. They want this market. They have a rather convenient opportunity to exclude Adobe from the party, and perhaps they’re taking it.

Were Flash Lite to gain momentum, it might make Adobe the Microsoft of mobiles, and Flash Lite the new Windows. That also makes it obvious why Apple wants to choke Flash to death before it falls into position as the new lowest common denominator in proprietary platforms on a new crop of mobile devices.
– Roughly Drafted