For a long time Flash has held the market when it comes to unique and interesting interactive experiences on the web. But now, with jQuery becoming ever more popular a shift has become evident, and for good reason too!

jQuery VS Flash

Flash is a very good tool and you can do some amazing things with it, however, some of the fundamental aspects of web design and development are drastically improved when using jQuery.

jQuery is a free open source JavaScript library that has been designed to aid interaction on the Web. With the help of frameworks such as MooTools and Prototype, it has become very easy for simple JavaScript animations to be implemented with ease, and without any dreaded browser cross-compatibility issues.

Search Engine Optimisation

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One of the biggest benefits of using jQuery is that it adds interactivity to standard HTML elements, and therefore does not compromise the visibility of your content to search engines. If it has been written correctly and your page elements display when Javascript is disabled, the the crawlers can access all of your content without a problem - just like a standard HTML website.

Flash is getting better at being picked up by search engines, but it is no where near being able to match pure HTML yet, so if you are thinking about using image galleries or having a fancy navigation, then I would definitely recommend jQuery.

It’s Tiny!

Small file

As you can see from the image above, jQuery is really small. All you have to do is include it in the <head> of your page and then call functions accordingly! Obviously there is going to be a little more code depending on the complexity of the task at hand, but you are never going to get near the size that some Flash files grow to be.

Besides simply improving the user experience by decreasing page load times, file size also now helps with your Google search positioning. Recently Google has announced that it will be using load-time as part of its ranking process, so this is yet another SEO benefit of using jQuery.

Cross-Browser Compatibility

Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome

Now I’m not arguing that jQuery is better at rendering elements to look exactly the same across different browsers, because it isn’t - although it is a good deal better than standard Javascript once was. The libraries have taken care of it all for you so you don’t really need to worry about it much unless you’re a hard-core developer…

This is more an argument about the number of browsers that jQuery is compatible with.

Basically, jQuery works in any browser that properly supports JavaScript / AJAX. This includes Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 6+, Safari 3+, Opera 9+, and Chrome 1+, as well as mobile versions of these browsers such as Safari on the iPhone and Opera Mobile / Opera Mini. Now this is a big benefit because of course Flash is not yet supported on the iPhone, and from what I’ve seen of Flash mobile support so far it’s a long way from working as smoothly as it does on your home computer.

It’s Simple

Simple

Bad joke, I’m sorry, but it really is that simple to add an image gallery, or an expanding <div> with some cool fading effects to any web page. If you know enough about web development to attempt building a website then you know enough about web development to use some jQuery.

There are thousands of tutorials out there to help you along and loads of open source code that generous developers have spent hours painstakingly putting together for Joe Blogs. You don’t need any extra software or plugins or anything, you just grab the code and stick it in your site. And if it doesn’t work exactly how you’d like, then hack it - and hope that it breaks once or twice, because then you learning, and that’s always good, right?

In Short…

The benefits of jQuery are:

  • Increased SEO
  • Small file size
  • More browser compatibility
  • Anyone can do it!

However, we mustn’t forget that Flash is good for some things too. If you wan’t to include videos on your website or make something truly whacky then there is no alternative. You’ll just have to bite the bullet and spend some time learning Actionscript - or pay someone, of course!

The benefits of Flash are:

  • Video and 3D support
  • Built in UI
  • More versatile

So there we have it, the reasons why you should (mostly) use jQuery over flash. If you want to add a bit of spice to your site without making compromises then it’s by far the best option.

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By Chris Skelton