Flash Websites

Overview of Flash

Flash is a development environment allowing web designers to create and develop interactive presentations & animations that can be embedded into web pages. Flash was born out of the need to create animations that could be downloaded quickly over the internet and played in the web browser. This resulted in mostly vector-based animation as they resulted in significantly smaller file sizes - vitally important for the then narrow-band world. One setback for Flash's early reputation was that of early web designers forcing viewers to sit through a dynamic introduction page. Fortunately dreaded 'splash page' seems to be almost extinct.

More recent developments to the Flash platform have enabled Flash to realise its potential to create feature rich web-based applications. The only thing standing in the way of Flash being the web development platform of choice is that its limited content indexation by the search engines prevents it being employed in situations where organic search returns are essential.

Suitable Applications of Flash

Flash can be used in a variety of ways and deployment environments:

• Advertising Banners
• Online Promotions
• Interactive Presentations
• Complete Websites
• Video Streaming
• DVD & desktop presentations
• Internet Animations
• Web Applications
• Online Games

Flash Benefits

The Adobe Flash platform provides numerous benefits to web design including:

• Website aesthetic enhancements through interactive and dynamic effects.
• Creation of a TV advertisement like environment where viewers can sit back and be informed about key product benefits
• As cross browser compatibility issues are handled by the Adobe Flash player, Flash projects are generally rendered the same across all browsers and computer platform combinations. This presents huge benefits to designers as they can invest their time in advanced functionality and design instead of spending hours perfecting a common cross-platform look & feel.
• Almost universal adoption of the Flash Player with close to 99% of the business marketing having the Flash Player installed on their computers and over 90% Flash player 8 or above.
• Flash animations can also be exported to stand-alone executable applications meaning they can be robustly deployed on DVD's.
• Adobe & Media have invested Flash movies greatly in delivering very small file sizes, so Flash can be downloaded rapidly.
• Recent versions of the Flash Player have strong XML support allowing for dynamic updating of the text, images & movies displayed within a Flash file.
• Flash is the most innovative environment to deploy creative works including advertisements, games.
• The Flash streaming video technology released in version 8 has led to the wide spread adoption of Flash as the de facto web video standard.

Next Steps

The future for Flash is only looking brighter. With such powerful cross-browser compliant technology, adding audience-engaging interactivity to your website has never been easier. iFactory have created a number of Flash Website Packages to allow our customer to make the most of Flash's advanced functionality. For more information please contact us.