Don’t Be Lured Into Flashy Graphics
Posted by Max Baun on Wed, Aug 20, 2008 @ 03:50 PM
Every website trying to sell something needs ways to grab the viewer’s
attention. Whether it is through images, video, or small applications, Flash is
multimedia software used to add this interactivity to websites. When using
Flash, you have to remember who is viewing your website. Going overboard with
the page animation with birds flying across and background color quickly
changing will most likely scare the user away.
At some point you’ve been greeted with a Flash website intro movie that
grabs your attention and then takes you to the website. The Flash animations
contain a scripting language called ActionScript, available in the common web
browsers and some smaller electronic devices. The animation or applications are
in SWF (Shock Wave Flash) format. The nice thing about the small Flash programs
is that they can work with Adobe Flash Player in two ways, independent of
websites or built in the website. The other benefit of Flash is that it
looks
the exact same on every platform and web browser (with Flash Player). This way,
you don’t have to worry about browsers interpreting the code wrong.
Even though you may have a very interactive website with flashy
graphics if people have no way of finding your website, there is no purpose of
even having one. One disadvantage to a complete Flash application for your site
is that search engines will not recognize the content because it is not
contained in the HTML code. When search engines search pages of source code, they
will look for the key words of the searchers. In with a Flash application,
there is no code to search besides a link pointing to the SWF file. A good way
to get around this disadvantage is to put all of your content in the code and
include small movies/animations on the side. Maybe have a very quick Flash
animation when a user clicks on a link that brings them to the next page while
keeping all your material in the text of your site.