

Virgin America ditches Flash on its site - ilamont
http://www.macworld.com/article/146820/2010/03/virgin_site.html

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mikeryan
Quite Frankly Virgin America's website probably never should have been using
flash in the first place. It wasn't adding value in this case. (I'm pro flash
in the right context, this wasn't one of them)

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ujeezy
Definitely. I love Flash, but Virgin America's use of it was very obtrusive
and made no sense.

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potatolicious
Most non-game use of Flash is obtrusive and makes no sense...

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wanderr
Flash still makes sense for RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) as well. There
are admittedly few of them out there though.

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technomancy
While it's great to see this stuff get more exposure, I'm kind of tired of
seeing it framed as an Apple vs Adobe battle instead of just people with taste
vs Adobe. You don't have to have an iPhone to want a site that works well
without that horrible plugin.

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audionerd
Their interactive route map still requires Flash:

[http://www.virginamerica.com/va/travelInfo.do?pageName=route...](http://www.virginamerica.com/va/travelInfo.do?pageName=routemap&rightBar=routemap_right_bar)

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danicgross
obviously this is still very fresh.. try cntrl+click on the slideshow on the
home page...

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lpgauth
good catch!

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jsz0
Good for them. Flash has its uses but I feel like at some point in the last 2
or 3 years web developers for many sites realized that writing something in
Flash offered better job security and more billable hours than using plain
ole' web standards. The other day I went to a site that used Flash for a store
locator page and after you filled out the form, in Flash, it simply went to a
new HTML page with an embedded HTML map quest object. There was absolutely no
reason for this to be in Flash.

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tomlin
Doubtful. jQuery, CSS, HTML, JS or Flash? Flash is quicker development time
hands down.

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fungi
that's a broad brush, in many cases i would absolutely disagree. really
depends on what you building and how well you are building it, particularly
when you want flash to work with old plugin version and on mobile devices. and
maintaining flash can be a royal pain in the ass, certainly can't just ssh in
to the server and poke around with your images and code on a flash site.

but yeah you can bang out some fancy stuff pretty fast in flash.

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morisy
While a lot of media outlets have been playing this up as some sort of tech
holy war, it really comes down to the conversions and compatibility. Build a
nice standardized site, and you can cut some (but not all) costs when trying
to reach out for mobile users. Virgin's not taking sides, they're trying to
make a profit.

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danw
What's amazing is that this is a news story at all. "Websites uses open
standards, like most other web sites".

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aresant
Why did they do it?

From the CTO: "Flash eliminates iPhone users."

Point to Apple.

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potatolicious
Point to all mobiles - Flash sucks up CPU badly enough on desktops, there is
as of yet no implementation of Flash I'd consider _good_ on any mobile
platform.

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marshallp
Adobe should have had a class action lawsuit filed against it for the amount
of daily mass suffering it has caused with flash.

