Flash VS Jquery

Adobe Flash became web designer’s dream in the late 90′s. It was basically a vector-based animation platform. It was very popular that time and was widely used in various websites. But with the advent of Jquery, Flash gradually lost its popularity. As the technology upgrades everyday Jquery becomes obvious choice over the Adobe Flash. There are some obvious reasons for this. I am trying to write it down point wise.

1. Flash is heavier but Jquery is light weighted – it implies that from SEO point of view Jquery is better than Flash. Jquery runs based on its own library (Jquery Library) – a JQUERY JS file that has to be kept some where in the server. Where as Adobe Flash player has to be installed in the Browser to run a Flash application.
2. There is a huge impact on website SEO for Flash based websites. Search engine spider crawl software can’t read Flash so it can’t collect any data to publish on the web. As a result the site will NOT be so seo friendly. Jquery has NO such problems so it becomes very popular now- a-days.
3. Adobe Flash is a Pro software while Jquery is FREE – though some Jquery plugins are NOT free for commercial use.
4. Now the most important is Flash does NOT run on iPhone and other mobile devices. As per the adobe record Flash works on 98% PC(s) and Laptops but NOT in all mobile devices including the MAC iPhone. So the conclusion is that Flash is NOT compatible 100% in modern days web.
5. It seems that Jquery wins over Flash but in reality it cannot fully replace Flash in use. Where Flash fully supports 3D capabilities and many extensive features for object animation, jQuery is limited. Furthermore, jQuery UI is nothing compared with Flash’s built-in UI – That’s one reason for Flash’s price tag. However we can create web animation using Jquery but if one needs a complicated effect in web page then Flash will be your friend.

Conclusion: Although jQuery is a powerful JavaScript framework that can build many flash-like effects, it cannot fully replace Flash. However, jQuery is now stepping ahead of Flash and grabs the web market over Flash.