05
May
The 2010 and 14th Webby Awards have been announced and celebrate the very best in current web design, interactive advertising, online film and video and mobile web development. But are they, once again, a little Flash heavy in this contemporary world of standards?
Certainly this question comes at a time when debate, if not down right argument, has reached epic proportions over whether or not Flash has any future on the web. The press over the past 10 days has been littered with punch, counter-punch between Apple and Adobe with regards the suitability of Flash as a platform for our mobile future. So, are the Webby’s, which have always been a little pro-Flash, beginning to lose step with reality?
Even a casual glance through this year’s winners reveals a significant number of Flash based websites, which leads once to wonder - what are the awards awarding? It is common knowledge that with the exception of a PC, Flash runs quite poorly on many devices. This is particularly evident under Safari on Mac OS X. This being the case, many of the websites in receipt of Webby awards provide a sub-standard user experience on a number of platforms. This is not to detract from their undoubted design credentials of course, but haven’t we now reached a point where web design is more than just - ‘pretty animation’?
I believe in many respects the problems arise because of a misnomer. By any modern standards the term ‘web design’ is simply inadequate in capturing the gamut of requirements of a full scale web project. You would not entrust the architecture, structural engineering, quantity survey, building, plumbing, heating, electrical, interior design and landscape gardening of your house to a ‘house designer’, so in the same respect one cannot distil the whole of a website down to a singular discipline.
If you read the Webby Award introduction it says, of the entrants, something like - ‘some are beautiful to look at and interact with, others are a testament to usability and functionality and a handful excel across the board’. I would personally refute this however. I would say many of the websites have their place because of the strength of the brand with which they are associated. The almost, unbridled desire for people to have their favourite brands at the very top. I would say of the Flash entrants usability and functionality are compromised - as I have always maintained about the re-definition of standard browsing techniques which come with Flash based websites. Although I would certainly agree some of the raw design in places is stunning.
So this comes back to my original question, should we really be focussing on non-standards based websites as a bellwether for quality design? Perhaps an area this question becomes most important is in mobile usage, tipped as being the strongest growth market heading into the next decade. The Apple iPhone currently accounts for 64% of mobile browser usage in the U.S [Apple Inc]. Additionally figures just announced suggest 1 million iPads have been shipped in the first 28 days, in the U.S alone. Essentially this means there is a vast user-base out their of people who cannot even access a large chunk of award winning websites.
In fact, moving beyond Apple and including all the various browsing devices, be they desktop or mobile, there are a large number of people who will have either a partly limited, or completely limited, experience when viewing Webby award winning websites. In the modern era does this remain acceptable?
My personal feeling is that it does not but indeed it’s just that, a personal feeling. I would much rather have seen the Webby’s championing more Javascript, HTML5 and mobile interfaces that will be paving the web for the future web, not looking back at the monolithic Flash sites of yesteryear.