I hate flash

This goes back a long way, when one used to hit a flash site and it hogged the download, even if you didn't have the flash player installed. But, what seems to be happening more and more these days is that Web developers are building flash-only sites: ie, sites which rely on flash for everything, including the navigation, with no html alternative. This irritates me even more than the flash script hogging the whole download. I still refuse to install flash, and have even installed the Firefox flashblock extension. For the past ten years, I regularly get told, "you're behind the times, just install flash". However, that only makes me more adamant that I don't need it.

What I'm pleased to find is that I am not alone out there. Googling the phrase "I hate flash" comes back with almost 20k hits (153k: 12/9/09), the most eloquent being this one.

This is a collection of flash-only sites that I have found:

Telkom SA's do broadband (lost a potential customer for adsl)
Sinotech SA (not that I'd buy any of their products, just wanted to look at what's available)
Wyckedd Foods (I like their products, and have a printed list, so don't need their site)
MNA Brewing (Text based, but uses flash navigation only)
Spengler Medical Equipment
Amalgamated Appliances (see my Russell Hobbs rant)
Subaru SA
Legacy Hotels
Scribd documents, for instance Linux starter pack
Wodim (I was looking for info on the wodim cd burning app when I came across this site).
Ekuthuleni Lodge
Crumpler camera bags
Kuswag Hoërskool

I have deliberately not included photography sites - there are a myriad of those too.

I recently purchased a Samsung NC10 netbook, and was horrified to find that the online user manual (the only manual available) was a flash app. Fortunately, I could figure my way around fairly easily as I dumped windows in favour of Ubuntu, and there's plenty of help for that out there!

Another reason for avoiding flash from PC Pro Magazine
"Mozilla is kicking off with reminders to upgrade Adobe Flash Player, which has been held responsible for a series of malware attacks."