Pages Menu
Categories Menu

Posted in jQuery

5 Reasons jQuery Flipbooks Replaced Flash

The digital publishing industry is in a state of transition. Okay, so what else is new? But there’s one very important thing that’s happened over the last few years. As with all online technologies, there’s been a transition away from Flash towards HTML5, CSS, and jQuery. This is a very good thing, too, because Flash basically sucks for the modern web. Don’t take our word for it, though – here are five reasons why you don’t want to create Flash flipbooks.

#1: Flash requires software

If you publish your flipbooks in Flash, people won’t be able to even open the thing unless they have Flash installed on their device. This used to be standard procedure in the days of desktop-only – but not anymore. First of all, you shouldn’t force people to download anything to view your content. Secondly, support for Flash is dying fast and this brings us to our next point.

#2: No support on iOS or Android

Would you like your content to be inaccessible on the two most widely used platforms around? No, probably not. But that’s exactly what you get once you start publishing content in Flash because neither iOS nor Android supports the media format. So that rules out iPhone/iPad users and just about every other mobile device, except Windows.

#3: Flash has too many security issues

One of the main reasons Flash got dropped by Apple was because it comes with a string of security concerns. Smartphones come with enough of those on their own and they don’t need Flash to help make things worse. Google quickly followed suit by dropping support on Android and here we are now.

#4: Flash performance sucks

Don’t be fooled into thinking the guy’s Apple and Google are kept awake all night from worrying about our online safety. More important than security for the tech giants was the fact Flash performance sucks – especially on mobile. It simply doesn’t perform well. HTML5 is the latest standard for rich media and jQuery is the programmer’s choice for bringing it to life.

#5: jQuery brought a new world of interactivity

By tapping into the jQuery library, modern flipbooks come with a new wealth of interactivity. User engagement is key to the whole flipbook experience and jQuery brings a richer set of animations and interactions in a lightweight package. The end result is flipbooks that can do more and do it faster.

Hopefully, those are enough reasons to keep you well away from Flash flipbook software. If you want to learn more about what jQuery flipbooks have to offer, check out our post on what to expect from the technology.

Joe Boyd

Post a Reply

Your email address will not be published.