Mobile Flash navigation doesn't really work

08 Jun 2004

Weathernews mobile Flash navigation

Mobile web navigation is one of my research areas so despite a long running usability dislike of desktop Flash navigation, I was interested in how Flash could help solve some of the mobile web navigation challenges.

It doesn't.

Mobile web navigation on i-mode is restricted to two dimensions: vertical scroll / selection (y) and click depth (z). Flash has the potential to open up navigation menus with both vertical and horizontal selection but unfortunately not on any Docomo mobile as horizontal movement of the directional keypad is reserved for page back and forward functions. The creative people at Weathernews get around this by using the vertical movement of the directional keypad for both vertical and horizontal selection on their mobile Flash weather site but although innovative, the click count is no different from the non-Flash version.

Mobile Flash navigation really fails when you click back to a Flash navigation menu and find yourself at the movie beginning and not the previously selected frame. Not caching prior Flash frame states makes complex drill-down navigation interfaces Flash can do so well, largely unusable.