Flash - To Use Or No To Use?

 Out there in the WWW there are thousands sites using flash for
their needs. But the majority sites are not in this list. Let's
summaries some facts about flash usage on YOUR web site. After
that it's you will have to decide: to use or not to use. There
are some facts about Macromedia Flash Technology: 

The First Fact: Sites are look much prettier and professional
with the flash animation on their pages if animation done by
professionals. Users sometimes visit sites only to see flash
intro if it's done in some original manner. 

The Second Fact: Flash Source Scripts cannot be stolen unlike
Java Scripts or HTML code. Flash files come in "two" pieces:
files with .fla extension are the actual source and .swf files
are compiled version of these files. In browsers you can see
only .swf files. However I’ve already seen some “swf scanners” .
Those programs let you see the action script coding used in
flash movie. 

The Third Fact: Flash animation files are slow to download and
require flash player plug-in . Regular static graphic requires
less time to download. In a couple of years when the problem of
dial-up connection may be solved and fast DSL lines will be
cheap and available for anyone this problem may seem not so
serious, but so far we must consider this aspect, as not all
users are eager to wait for a minute or two to see your flash
intro. That's one of the main reason flash is not popular on the
big corporate sites (but Yahoo for example displays fast loading
flash advertisements on their pages) 

The Fourth Fact: Not all browser compatible with flash players.
The old versions of MS Explorer and Netscape Navigator cannot
display flash movies. There is a solution however: to use Java
Script to check the compatibility of browser and display the
static image if the player is not available for that browser.
Well there is some issue still left with browsers who cannot
understand Java Scripts but there are few people who use those
browsers these days…but you must keep that in mind. 

The Fifth Fact: As you may notice we used on our web page
http://www.metamorphozis.com flash header. Why? The reason was
simple and that is the fact number five: flash movies are cashed
in special browser folder and second time you access it you
don't need to wait. Flash movie will be displayed from the cache
folder. Image files are also stored in browser cache and may be
reused if you keep the file names and path to images the same.
But we selected flash due to several technical reasons related
to our needs. So we did it to reduce our page loading time. See
how confusing it sounds with the third fact I mentioned?:-) The
problem is that it requires a lot of time to download but only
for the first time! If you could make visitors wait that time
then you will benefit from having flash header as it always
there and does not need to be loaded each time you go to the
other page. 

The Sixth Fact: Search engines do not like flash pages, as it
makes almost impossible to crawl them. They can not crawl links
on your web page and can not index your website content if it is
in flash. In html you can insert flash only as object. 

 As you may see flash has number of advantages and
disadvantages. No matter what you think about flash but it
belongs to the future of the Internet. If you cannot admit this
and stay away then tomorrow you will regret you did it. Just
consider the flash usage on your web site. Remember! Be
reasonable in design and flash usage and you will get good
looking website. This article may be reprinted and distributed
with no charge until the credit line below remains without
changes. Thanks for reading. Oleg Lazarenko Metamorphosis Web
Design Studio http://www.metamorphozis.com Production Manager