Factors To Consider When Using Flash Content
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Flash has come a long way over the years, and is now thought of as one of the best ways to add graphically rich, interactive content to your web site. But there are some considerations you should keep in mind when adding Flash to your web site.
Flash Design Is Costly
Foremost, it is pretty costly to have Flash content developed for you. Since Flash involves animation, interaction, graphics, text, audio, and video – things can get pretty complicated. It takes considerable labor hours to build Flash content, and you will quickly find your Flash design dollars being used up. The more complex and involved your Flash content, the more it is going to cost. So, you’ll want to determine your budget for your Flash content, and that will usually dictate how much Flash you can afford to have in your web site.
Search Engine Issues
Search engines cannot read Flash content as they can a normal web page with regular HTML text. To the search engines, Flash looks like a single graphical element, and at most they will be able to understand a short title and description of the Flash content. Even if your Flash content contains text, search engines will not be able to read that text.
So if you build a web site entirely out of Flash, then your site will not rank well since the search engines cannot read any of its content. So you’ll want to think carefully about building a web site entirely out of Flash.
On the other hand, it is perfectly fine to use Flash content here and there in your web site without significantly affecting your search engine rankings. As long as the rest of your site has plenty of HTML text for search engines to read, you should be okay.
Constrained Width And Height
Another thing to keep in mind is that Flash web sites are normally a fixed size with a given height and width. This is different that regular HTML web sites in which a page with long text, for example, will expand downward to show that text. In a Flash site, your height is fixed, so if you have a large amount of text, you need to put that text in a scrollable text region within the confines of the Flash content. The same is true for the width of a Flash site – it is typically a fixed width that does not expand.
How Much Is Too Much?
Have you ever encountered one of those Flash Intro screens that pop up before the real home page of a web site? Don’t you almost always want to just press the Skip Intro link and get to the home page? Be smart when adding Flash content to your web site, and don’t add things that people really don’t want. Always ask yourself: “Is this Flash content adding any value to my web site?”. If not, then don’t add it as it is probably not necessary.
Compatibility Issues
Flash is widely compatible and is installed in almost all major browsers by default. However, there are different versions of Flash that have been released over the years, so you need to be aware of which versions your customers have installed.
The current version of Flash, for example, has a lot more features, than the version of Flash released a couple of years ago. If you design your Flash content using the current version, it will have all these great features, however your customers may still have the older version of Flash installed, and will not be able to see your newer Flash content. So you may have to design your Flash content with an older Flash version to be more compatible with the version of Flash that your customers have. Use the version of Flash that you know your customers will be able to view.
Conclusion
Flash is a great technology that has gained wide acceptance and is used all over the Internet. To make the most out of Flash, keep the above considerations in mind when adding Flash content to your web site.
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