Flash websites – a new new age

Flash has been about since 1996, and has since built up a progression of uses and options for deployment, commonly to add animation or interactivity. The impact of flash on webpage (if done correctly) can give some lovely visual effects and really bring a page to life.

However it does have some down sides, before any design through flash can be achieved, you of course need the application, currently a new install of flash CS4 would cost around £620. In terms of a webpage, the flash content is completely invisible to search engines and visual impaired user tools (like screen readers), designers can get carried away with design and so file sizes increase rapidly, slowing down page load times and increasing server strain for busy sites.

A good Flash designer will work within these restrictions, with a superb end result. This has been happening since the .com boom of the late 90's and well into the modern age of the internet where media rich websites are considered the norm rather than the benchmark, so its not exactly pioneering in that way.

But consider what else is happening on the web, content managed and user added content now head up the most popular sites globally, everybody has heard of Facebook and Youtube. Having this totally within a flash environment would be an immensly complicated task for a developer, yet shrink this down to the day to day we spend our time building, harnessing the visual benefits of flash with the flexibility of a content managed system and the results can be awesome.

With the dawn of XML and incredibly detailed actionscript, a flash web site can be template driven and populated with XML file powered by a CMS. Add this with disibility improvements, flash detection, a dedicated traditional HTML alternative and even abilities to involve tools like Google Anayltics and the end result is not only a project to be proud of, but also a market leading tool for the client.