I have been meaning to write this post for some time. Just too many things going on as summer draws to a close. At one point, I was considering purchasing an iPad. However, I realized that it doesn’t support Flash Player. That got me thinking – just how important is it for me to have access to Flash Player? I decided to conduct a day of observation. I chose yesterday to track all the sites I visited in the course of doing my job (professor at a community college). I recorded the URL (so each site would only count once if I visited it multiple times during the day). I also recorded whether Flash Player was needed to experience the content of the site. These are simply my observations for one day of my browsing habits. As a professor I am always looking at a variety of sites (since I teach web technologies). I had a fair number of meetings yesterday so I probably did not visit as large a number of sites as I typically would. The results are shown below for the 29 sites I visited during the day.
Personally, I was rather surprised at the results. The darker green slice (above) means that Flash Player was required to experience all the content of the site. A full 69% of the all sites I visited yesterday required Flash Player to fully experience the site. Some would have been incredibly difficult to navigate without Flash Player (for example, Total Training). Others have alternatives to using Flash Player (such as Lynda.com), but I would have had to change my established player preferences at that site (which I chose not to do).
The bottom line (based on my single day of observation) is that today (August, 2010), I need Flash Player to effectively do my job (and fully experience the sites I visit on a daily basis). Unless a device supports Flash Player, it is highly unlikely that I will consider a purchase as I will be restricting my ability to get my job accomplished. I encourage others to make a similar observation for a day. Perhaps we can compare notes as to whether my observations are skewed or average for a typical professor.
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While I’ve never quantified my experiences; in year or so WITHOUT Flash Player on my mobile device, I definitely felt the inconvenience. Too many times I’d have to grab the laptop and visit the site a second time to view a video, application, or demo.
I can say that in my experience, the absence of Flash Player is crippling.