You don't need Flash to be flashy: IBM dev

After overhauling the Australian Open website for this year's tournament, IBM site manager Dave Provan has said that Flash is not a required tool for making a site function visually.

IBM site manager, Dave Provan (Credit: Luke Hopewell/ZDNet Australia)

Provan said that he and his team sought to make the site as light as possible, making for faster load times on mobile and tablet devices. Provan added that much of the Australian Open page didn't run on Adobe's Flash platform in order to achieve that end.

"[The home page, for example] isn't all Flash, it's AJAX. It works on iPad and other tablets. You don't need Flash to [build a site], you can do it with this," he said.

Many mobile devices including Apple's ever popular iPad tablet ship without Flash support, meaning that Flash-based content appears invisible.

While Provan said that Flash wasn't necessary for web multimedia content, he added that not everyone had embraced the new HTML5 standard as yet.

"We are looking to utilise components [such as HTML5] when we find a steady platform. At the moment, we have to bear in mind that not all of our target market are on HTML5," Provan said.

"Don't get me wrong, as a developer I would love it if it was all HTML5, it would make my life so much easier, but that's the game we play," he added.

Apple famously shipped its latest incarnation of the MacBook Air without Flash pre-installed — the company's latest shot across Adobe's bow after a very public stoush last year.