Using Flash Animation
Flash is a technology that adds animation and interactivity to web pages. It can also be used to create entire web sites.
How do you decide if you should add it to yours?
Flash Advantages:
1) Flash animations can make an emotional connection with your visitor and whet their curiosity to learn more about your web site.
2) They can make your web site more eye-catching and promote interactivity and humor.
3) Animated elements on a web page usually get attention before anything else. Your web site visitor's eyes will most likely be drawn there first.
4) Flash content can be easily scaled to any size without distortion.
Flash Disadvantages:
Deciding whether or not to use Flash:
Most visitors come to your web site looking for information.
You need to help them find what they are looking for in the shortest amount of time with a good navigation system and a few number of clicks. Can Flash help you accomplish this?
If not, then the simplicity of HTML may be your best choice. Your visitors should be your main concern throughout your decision process.
1) Flash animations may distract visitors and deter them from reading or finding what they are looking for. This can be minimized by keeping the animation brief and turning off looping (repetition of the animation over and over).
2) It is more expensive and time consuming to update and maintain a Flash website than a traditional website.
3) Music and sound files embedded in Flash movies increase their file sizes which in turn increases the download time. Visitors also usually don't like music forced on them. It can be helpful to offer them the ability to turn off sound in your web site.
4) Flash reduces accessibility for users with disabilities, although the latest version addresses most of these issues. You can check out the new accessibility features built into Macromedia Flash CS3 and Macromedia Flash Player 9.
5) It is difficult to write valid HTML/XHTML code to include Flash in your web page. The default code output is invalid.
Embedding Flash with valid code can be done with scripts like the UFO script. It is designed to support W3C standards compliant, accessible, and search engine friendly web design. Another alternative is the SWFOBject method. This script can detect the Flash plug-in in all major web browsers and is designed to make embedding Flash movies as easy as possible.
