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A Closer Look at Choosing Between Flash and jQuery

Whether HTML5 will beat Flash or not, it has been one of the most frequently discussed topics in the web design community lately. In the heat of this debate another popular opposition, Flash vs. JavaScript, was somewhat lost. It’s rather paradoxical, taking into account that HTML5 is still in the draft version (even though a working one) and JavaScript, particularly its most popular library jQuery, is a complete and active platform which is widely used in modern web construction.

In other words, while HTML5, with its innovative and potentially dangerous for Flash “video” and “canvas” elements, is a sleeping menace against Flash (in some areas), jQuery is its quite real and pushing competitor. In this article we would like to look at the current capabilities of both Flash and jQuery and define situations when each of these platforms should be used.

You might have seen lots of articles on web design blogs showing examples of how jQuery can actually replace Flash. However, we prefer to avoid the “vs” perspective as we believe it’s not the right angle to look at these platforms from. What would your reaction be if you saw an article on a random blog discussing 10 ways to replace a spoon with a fork? Exactly. Flash has no equals in making rich multimedia websites that involve a user into a whole interactive experience, just like a movie or a game does.

Instead of trying to replace Flash, it’s more effective, in our opinion, to use jQuery in a completely different niche, like creating web applications that are a balance of visual attractiveness and functionality.

Flash or jQuery? Decision Factors

Obviously, the major factors predetermining which tool should be used in the development of a particular website are the purpose of the site and the audience it’s targeted to. Is it a personal portfolio or online store that you are going to create? Is this information, a service or pure entertainment your visitors will come to the site for? After these questions are answered, the idea of what kind of design this should be and thus, what tools are best to achieve it, will take shape in your mind.

Here are some more specific factors you might consider in further evaluation:

How Much Interactivity?

Evaluate the importance of interaction features on the site. Enhanced interactivity is typical of websites with a relatively low level of information consumption, such as promotional and advertising websites, product presentations, music clips, exhibitions of professional skills etc.

These websites rarely offer more than two informational appeals to the users (mostly the name of the promotion object and where it can be obtained), and focus mainly on delivering an enjoyable website usage experience. Among the common elements that can be seen on sites of this type are games, controllable 3D objects, advanced animations and transitions.

When the task is to engage the users via any sort of entertaining experience relying heavily on interaction, Flash, undoubtedly, offers far more options, than JavaScript. jQuery, in its turn, is a perfect solution to give a text-based website some moderate interactivity and subtle dynamics. This is what it’s best to use for, but not limited to. Sleek visual feedback on mouse hovers and clicks and a variety of smooth animation effects created while using jQuery can be vivifying water for HTML/CSS-based sites.

Duchy Originals
Utilizing a nifty jQuery carousel the designers of the Duchy Originals websites managed to display content compactly yet attractively to the users.