This keeps happening to me on Microsoft sites, and it really bugs me…

  • I go to view a product on one of our sites, Xbox.com and Zune.net most recently
  • I click on some image to see a larger view…
  • I right-click on the image with the intent of saving it to my machine, only to get the standard Flash context menu (Zoom, etc…)

I get the appeal of Flash, I really do… but these pages are just a gallery of images with a back and next button. There is no smooth animation between images, the images aren’t interactive or animated, this is just 3-10 jpeg images that I can move between. By using Flash, I lose the ability to interact with these images in the way that HTML would have provided, and I can’t see what I’ve gained!

It is completely within the capabilities of HTML combined with Javascript to make an image gallery with this level of functionality, and shouldn’t we try to stick to that level of technology whenever possible?