Wednesday 29 August 2012

Use of Flash Animation in Professional Website Design

A modern day website is similar to nothing without good flash animation. From fan page websites to those of companies worth billions we see flash animations in the background doing their magic. One can rightly argue that in some cases these animations become in line with the image of any certain company, you may see flashing pink comets on a Barbie website but never see so much as a spark on Maybach’s site. These things define companies and give their first impressions.

Now all of this may look and sound very impressive but one thing should always be kept in mind that most of the sites existing out there are for the sole purpose of doing business and at the end of the day what matters the most is that visitors should be able to easily navigate their way around the website, do what they are there to do; smartly and efficiently; and leave. Never burden a site with ‘look what I can do’ flash content. It takes time to load and does let search engines crawl through the information.

 
The basic information should always be presented in a text form so search engines can crawl through it and give results to anybody interested. Flash design is basically meant to make any site more interactive, so that a visitor may have the complete sketch of a website at their disposal with the help of which they may navigate easily and that is it, besides making it more interactive, there is no other use for it. So the simple thing to do in this regard is don’t overkill.

By its very nature, flash is animation software and all credits to it, websites are so lively nowadays. The people who advocate the use of flash do it for the following reasons. It gives a very rich and interactive experience, its content loads a lot faster because it is vector based and finally flash caches its content in such a way that it doesn’t have to be reloaded afterwards. One point that arises here is that what other ways are there to present information graphically so that we may be able to avoid using flash in the first place, one answer to that is using HTML where it may not present things in a dynamic manner, it does the job well for static pictures.

At the end of the day flash is concerned more with the looks of the thing rather than its actual applications and a very careful balance must be maintained, designers should ask the following questions from themselves before loading flash content onto their sites.
 
1. Is it really necessary at all?
Designers should always ask this question because there may be some sites for example some academic and government sites where the flash content may not look all that decent at the end of the day.

2 Required plug-ins
Websites estimates that 85% of users have the plug-ins required to run flash content but that still leaves 15% out of the loop and even from amongst that 85% there would be people with outdated versions so it is imperative to know your client before you load on this stuff.
 
3. Non- vector graphics
If your website relies on non vector graphics e.g. photographs then it may not be suitable to use flash as it may get bogged down by them. This is because non vector graphics are not easy for flash to process in the first place.
 
4. Search engine visibility
As discussed above, visibility on the search engine is another important issue as flash obscures content on it and it is no more visible to the search engine so only put as much data on flash as can be afforded. Necessary information or information that attracts customers should never be placed on flash.
 
5. Down time affordability
In some cases if the flash content is heavy, it may take some time to load which may even take longer for people with slower internet connections so it is a question you would have to ask yourself that would your client be willing to wait just for the sake of some flash content because losing valuable customers just for the sake of some flash content is not a wise move.
 
6. Will anything be accomplished that plain HTML can't?
Another decision is whether static HTML content would work or not, for example if a simple picture can work as a background then burdening your website with a complex heavy flash background may not be a smart move at all.
 
These are a short list of questions anybody designing a website must ask themselves. What should be considered at this point is that flash in its very nature, does a cosmetic job for the website and do only as much as to make navigation easy to presenting all the tools in one place but should you decide to put important information or information that could affect your customers in a serious way, it may be a smart move at the end of the day and a company may end up losing valuable customers.
At the end of the day what is advised is to use flash content carefully and not over do it, but if done properly and on the right things, it may actually garner visitors interest. 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment