Friday, June 19, 2009

When Is It A Good Idea To Have A Flash Website?

By Katt DelaCruz

All those that have taken the time to understand the details of flash and all the advantage that it carries can easily get to know the pros and cons of having it on your website. The main use of it is to bring in the crowds and as much as possible convince them to buy what it is you are selling.

Flash is important in more ways than one and this is how:

- Almost all the common web browsers like Mozilla and Internet Explorer are supportive of flash. As long as every visitor that stumbles upon your website has flash plug in, then you have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter what OS they are using, they will be able to access the flash content

- In today's world, if you are going for animation then Flash is must. It has wider application in the field of animation.

- Most applications that are based on flash are easily picked up by video players like Quick Time

- Flash games do not and are not affected by problems that have a bandwidth origin

- During Flash website development, vector graphics can look smoother and appealing. There is a facility of image replacement as well for the special fonts. The process of image replacement can be done with a technique known as sIFR i.e. Scalable Inman Flash Replacement. Besides the above mentioned features, Flash applications can also perform the task of script actions and data collection.

To add the icing, Flash Applications can serve the purpose of data collection. But it is not all good news for the Flash as there are also some downsides to using it. Some of the major ones are highlighted below:

- Limitations with speed and the bandwidth. Most of the Flash websites are slow to download. In most of the cases, you cannot operate them before complete download.

- With Flash websites The 'BACK' button is

- Because Flash website is based on images it is difficult for the screen reader to interpret it.

- Search engines make use of Hyper Text Markup Language, simply known as HTML. When the Flash enabled sites fail to have it, they are not picked out by the engines and this is just bad news for the owners that are looking to make revenue since the traffic drive will be less than ideal.

- Not all among the internet savvy understand the function or the role that is played by the flash applications. In most of these cases, the unknowing internet users take them to be eye candy and this is bad especially if the user in question was a potential buyer.

Despite all the miracles that Flash applications have, the downsides of not being able to drive as much traffic due to the SEO factor have led to them being left out by site owners.

About the Author:

No comments: