HTML vs Flash
After the decision on which cheap hosting company to sign on with for your website comes another decision: how will you build it? There are numerous design languages you can use, the most popular of them being Flash and HTML. 
Let's look at the two, their pros and cons, and which websites they work best for? to help make your decision a lot easier!
HTML
HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, introduced in the Internet's infancy in 1991. Designed to organize and manage content efficiently. It allows you to create web pages, and HTML code is written to post links, text, images, and more to these pages.
The most recent version is HTML 5, bringing video and animation integration straight to your site. It is something previous versions just couldn't do.
Pros
- Compatible with all screen formats, making your site accessible and readable from any device: tablets; PCs; mobile;, etc.
- SEO. If you include important keywords in the content you post on your website, your website will be perfectly optimized for the search engine.
- Fast loading. No more plugins are necessary!
- Easy to learn, easy to use. Even a novice can get the hang of HTML quickly.
- CMS integration. Easy to install and use, thousands of pre-built CMS will allow you to use HTML without knowing a bit of code quickly.
Cons yet choose HTML from comparison HTML vs Flash
- Browser support. HTML5 is only backed by modern browsers (a.k.a. everything except older versions of IE before 9). You'll find that older browsers don't give you the same enhanced browsing experience as the latest browser version.
- Media licensing problems. Because of licensing issues, media must be compressed in a variety of formats to make it compatible with most browsers. It takes a lot of time, but this issue might address in the form of updates.
Flash
Macromedia's Flash gives you the power to add video and animated content to your website. For Flash content to work, you must have a Flash plugin. Website designers love it: they can create engaging and highly interactive web page components to please the user.
Adobe launched it in 1996 to cater to developers and designers to create animations, games, and other media for the web. In 2008, Google started crawling Flash files.
Pros
- Simple. Adding animated content is super easy!
- Interesting site. With Flash animation enhancing your website, users will likely find the design more appealing.
- Quick to download and display, thanks to the fact it is more disk space efficient than bitmap formats, making it small in size.
- Bandwidth efficient.
- Has a large community of developers to provide support when needed.
Cons which let you choose HTML in comparison HTML Vs Flash
- No SEO help. Search engines don't care at all about your excellent Flash content!
- Not compatible with all screens. Those viewing your page on their tablet or smartphone can't see your fancy Flash animation.
- Another download for the user. To be able to read the code, the user must have Flash Player installed on their computer.
- Adobe decided to end support for Flash after 2020. Businesses websites and applications would upgrade to modern media platforms to make the Web More Secure. Flash player itself was a favorite target for hackers. Tools are available to convert Flash to HTML 5. You can limit Flash to specific business functions away from another network if you don't want to eliminate it.
Flash offers little usability. According to usability expert Jakob Neilsen, “Although multimedia has its role on the Web, current Flash technology tends to discourage usability for three reasons:
- it makes the bad design more likely,
- breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction style, and
- consumes resources that would be better spent enhancing a site's core value.” This is up to user opinion, however.
So who should use HTML vs Flash?
Goodbye to Flash
(October 30, 2019) Google stops indexing standalone SWF (Shockwave Flash) files content that its crawlers find on websites. Since July 2019, Google disabled Flash in Chrome by default in the Chrome 76 release. From September 2019, Mozilla disabled Flash by default in Firefox 69. Microsoft also retired Flash from its Chromium-based Edge browser.
The demise of the Flash happens due to its overly complicated design that invited hackers to exploit bugs.
If your website's purpose is all about the image of your business or is designed to promote the products and services that you offer, Flash is a great way to go. However, if you are a site offering customer support, for example, you might irritate your customers with all the fancy, useless Flash animations.
Does your site feature Flash animations? What language do you rely on?
Most developers now use HTML5 technologies used in all modern browsers.