Flash is dead; long live jQuery

How jQuery won the internet

It’s not surprising that Flash was popular for a long time despite it’s major flaws. Flash let users make games, play movies, animate pictures, and use effects. Anyone who has watched someone use every transition PowerPoint has to offer in a presentation gets it. But just like those awful slice and dice transitions, Flash wasn't actually that useful.

In fact it was often the opposite of useful. Restaurant websites are among the biggest problem users of flash, often opening a website with a long Flash animation with music and awkward photos of the inside of the restaurant when all anyone really wants to know is how to get there and when they’re open.

jQuery on the other hand has a lot of the oomph of Flash while remaining functional. There was a period of time in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s where java script was something of a dirty word. Many browsers had issues with java script plugins on sites, and often enough a java script plugin would also give someone a virus. It was messy.

jQuery managed to re-brand and improve java script though. Now jQuery works in most browsers, and is an integral part of platforms like WordPress and Wikipedia.

More importantly, it does a lot of the things Flash does. Coding blogs like Smashing Magazine often feature jQuery plugins that make tables and charts interactive and more user friendly, animate graphs, create galleries, or improve content on websites with sliders and dynamic grid systems.

Where text and images were nigh-impossible to grab in Flash, they’re easily accessed with jQuery, so using it doesn’t hurt your SEO numbers and makes it easier for your users to grab content and save it for later.

And with the mobile market gaining market share every day, jQuery works on most mobile phones and tablets, so you don’t lose your audience.

Finally, jQuery doesn’t require a plugin any more. That’s how built-in to our browser experience it is. Flash still requires constant updates and is prone to the same virus issues java script used to have, where jQuery has moved on and advanced.

jQuery does everything Flash used to do, but better and on more platforms. That’s how it won the internet.