WebDesignQuest.com

To flash, or not to flash? That is the question. Weather it is better to meet the user requirements for entertainment or to take arms against overly flashy sites. Flash is one of the most commonly used applications, however lets review. It has been used since the 90’s, evolving into what is now used in many bundle programs. Most web sites today use flash in one way or another.

When you open a site you are most likely to see some kind of flash animation on the site. Some of these animations can be annoying, while others informational and interesting. The common uses for flash applications are:

•  Small “eye candy” animations
• Banner Advertising
•  Corporate presentations
• CD business cards
• Demos and tutorials for web and CD applications

When using flash you can intertwine:

• Animation
• video,
•  sound
• music
•  voice over’s
•  And connect to a database for personalized interactivity or calculations.

Some benefits of flash pieces are that flash be designed for both CD and web applications, this allows for the piece to be used for direct mail and online. If you decided that your site was going to be a full flash site it would be more streamlined, and the look of the site would be more cohesive. It is harder to emulate the same look and feel/ interface using flash and HTML.

However, not everyone has the flash application and so some users may be required to download this application or they could have the wrong version of flash. Sometimes to much flash and music can be distracting and will make the site load slow when the flash is streaming. Also, the search engines won’t be able to properly read a flash intro and unless you have a link to the home page on this flash peice the search engine won’t be able to rate your site.  There are also a lot of sites with flash intro’s that have no purpose, Just because you CAN do it doesn’t mean you SHOULD do it!

The topic of flash multimedia is a highly debated topic. On the one hand you have the you have to rich media evangelists and on the other you have the usability experts. Each side has good arguements, but which side do you need to be on? You could be on the side of the usability experts who argue that flash is evil and that the technology uses to much, while the media evangelists stick to their guns claiming that bad web designers should be to blame for excess not the techonology.

 There are a couple different kinds of ways that you could use flash. There are complete “flash sites” where the whole site is complete flah integrated site, although it can be effect most users find that there is too much flash on the site.  You could also add some flash to a simple HTML designed site. These sites are recommended by the usability experts, if you want to add flash to your site.  Some flash only sites are accomadated by non-flash sites, to cater to a wider variety of users. A few other ways that you can use flash mutltimedia is in banner advertising and interactive button advertisments.

So should you use flash on your website? My answer would be yes. But consider a few of these details:

• Flash content is not properly indexed on search engines - Although search engines are able to index information from flash animation, I would not recommend putting important information in a flash animation. Most search engines pass up the information because they can not properly index the information
• Complex flash animation can introduce usability issues - For example, a user may try to use the back button on their browser to return to the previous page, but it will just restart the animation! This is something a desinger will nee to consider when building a flash interface.
• You can’t be sure that all you visitors will see the flash content - Pretty obvious, you will want to have alternative content for when the flash does not load.

96% of web developors have flash mutltimedia on their browsers! Does this prove that flash is something that you need to use? No!  There are a few questions that you consider before you decided if you need flash:

• Will flash help me communicate with my audience? - The first thing that you need to consider is if flash makes sense to use. Will you be able to convey your point better to the audience in how you will adress their concerns, as well as keep the users needs and perspectives in mind.
• Will my audience have the right plug in? - The estimate is that 85% of users have the flash capabilities, with new browsers being shipped with flash already built in. But that still leaves 15% of people who don’t have the capability or have an outdated version.

Now the big question is, Is flash a friend or a foe? I would say both. There are some ups and downs of the use of flash and it is hard to decide when you need to use it or not. I hope though, that I have informed you enough for you to make the right decision for your website.