Home | Www - Internet | Earning Online
One of the hottest developments on the Internet has been the creation and use of Flash based animations. Ironically the load times of websites on the Internet have been going down even with the spread of broadband. Don't make this mistake. Always be sure that the Flash movies on your website load as quickly as possible. You should pre-load and back-load larger movies whenever possible. Don't assume your visitors will have tons of system resources to spare. Flash uses the visitor's system resources, so it is possible to crash an old or heavily taxed computer by asking it to do too much of the processing for your animation. A good Flash designer understands this. With a few exceptions, an all Flash website is almost always a bad idea. Search engines have a hard time with these types of sites. If natural search engine optimization or SEO is even a small part of your online marketing strategy, then you will want to avoid an all Flash site like the plague. However, if you are an artist or say a Flash designer, then it could be a good fit. There are quite a few design advantages to an all Flash site, but unfortunately they almost always get outweighed by the significant number of other disadvantages. The best way to include Flash animations in your website is with a modular approach. Use small discrete Flash movies embedded in a standard HTML site structure to get the effect you are going for. They will load faster, are easier to edit, and allow search engines to do their job. Not too long ago I was adding a Flash movie I had created for a client's website but when I went to test it, I got this message displayed as I clicked on it: click to activate and use this control. What the heck? It turns out it is a new security feature in IE. Thankfully it is easily fixed with a short bit of JavaScript. I have included a link to the solution for this problem at the end of this article. Just because you can animate something doesn't mean you should. This will have a lot to do with your website's audience, but typically less animation is better than more. Try to think like a Japanese interior designer when deciding how much animation is too much. Less is always more. Don't use fast motions to attract your visitor's attention. Keep it smooth and well paced. Slower is much better than faster. You don't want to make your visitors wait, but you also don't want to make them wonder what they just missed. Staying at least two release versions behind the bleeding edge is always a smart way to go. The Flash Player is now in its 9th full version, and definitely won't stop there. Macromedia, now owned by Adobe, is constantly adding new features to the Flash Player to enhance the capabilities and fix known bugs. There is about a years lag time before the latest Flash Player is on at least 80% of the systems browsing the web. To make sure that your visitors don't have to download the latest Flash Player to view your Flash movie, make sure you only use features that have been out for at least a year. Admittedly having to download the latest player isn't the worst thing in the world, but why make your visitor go through even a little bit of a hassle when it isn't necessary? Have quality flash movies and videos. If I do have to wait a few seconds to see a Flash movie, I want it to be worth the wait. This almost always means hiring a professional flash designer. Flash is a very complicated program with a very steep learning curve. Don't waste your time beating your head against the wall. Focus on your core business and let a professional handle this part.
Article Source: http://www.rightarticle.com
Get Dustin's other articles on good Flash design and download the JavaScript fix and installation instructions for that pesky IE pop up message: click to activate and use this control
Please Rate this Article
5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
