Flash has been in the news quite a bit these days, partly because of the current release and partly because of the ongoing fallout over the Jakob Nielson article (Flash: 99% Bad). Even Macromedia has gotten into the act, working with Nielson to improve the face of Flash and the challenge of usability. “What Nielson said, apart from the sensationalistic nature of the headline, was bang-on,” said Duncan McAlester, co-author of ‘Skip Intro.’ “Flash, for the most part, had been used in a very poor manner up until that time (and still is in many cases).”

"My biggest problem with the article though was what it did for usability in the minds of graphic designers. Designers, believe it or not, are very responsible people; they spend years learning about legibility, text flow, visual hierarchies, etc. The Flash: 99% Bad article, in my opinion, put back usability a good 12-18 months. I would say that without question every designer I know who heard of the 99% Bad article had an immediate reaction that ‘Jakob was an idiot’ without reading the article. It seems that only within the last 6-12 months have designers started to realize that what Jakob said has a great deal of merit.”

“I totally agree with Duncan,” says Michelangelo Capraro, co-author. “For the most part, a lot of what Nielsen said was pretty spot-on. But Nielsen’s only recommendation to Flash developers was to not use Flash, which is the wrong approach to the problem. Nielsen was unwilling to recognize a powerful tool that could really make web sites MORE usable. He should've offered solutions to Flash developers rather than bashing Flash as a novelty. Now with Flash MX, some of the issues he picked at have been fixed and, just recently, a press release went out about Nielsen teaming up with Macromedia to help them define usability guidelines for Flash. Now he's all for Flash? That’s a bit of a strange turn, but it’s a better approach than his previous one.”