Making Flash Websites

by Warren

Making Flash Websites, who hasn't thought about making at least one recently? Flash-based sites have been on fire for a few years now. Every time you turn around Macromedia has added yet one more absolutely must have feature into flash. The question is, is it time for you to venture in to the flash site market? It might seem like an easy decision but many consider flash sites to be heavy and sluggish. Sometimes they are even considered over kill for the task at hand. Let's talk about the "good" and the "bad".

Making Flash Websites (the positives):
The first thing that I would consider amazing when it comes to making flash websites is the interactivity. Actionscripts provide a vast number of options. Designers and programmers alike use flash to provide/create extremely attractive games. One thing that is usually agreed upon when it comes to flash, it always draws visitors back for more.

When it comes to the regular websites that I build, I check each to make sure that my visitors can view its pages with different browsers. I check the Internet Explorer, Firefox , Opera etc. Just imagine, with Flash you no longer need to worry about browser compatibility. You no longer need to worry about how CSS code displays in one browser versus another. When it comes to making Flash websites, your websites will always display correctly as long as your visitor has Flash Player installed.

Finally, when using Flash, its animation features can be used to convey messages in both an efficient and effective manner. In addition Flash animation utilizes much smaller files compared to movies.

Making Flash Websites (the negatives):
In order for flash to be an effective tool, people have to download the Flash player. The problem is that although many people will use it if they already have it, many will not simply because they don't want the hassle of downloading. Now if Flash was already a standard tool on every PC then we would be in business, but it is not yet.

Search Engine Optimization:
Mot search engines are not quite capable of indexing Flash content just yet. You know how the story goes from here. If you can't get your content indexed then you probably won?t rank for it either. All of this spells bad news.

Page Speed:
Compared to normal images and text, Flash users wait longer on average. The longer your Flash takes to load the more likely this will count against you in Google's rank analysis. In addition the longer it takes to load the more likely you may lose a visitor.

I think Flash is great but it has to be used sparingly. Whether or not you make a Flash website should be based on the need for interactivity. A complete Flash website may be over kill. A mixture of HTML and Flash will produce great textual and graphical content. Keep this in mind when planning your next project.