When discussing site design and technology with clients, we always discuss the use of Adobe’s Flash technology in the site. Adding Flash can give a site a tremendous visual kick:

• Smooth, slick navigation menus
• Controlled page loading and transitions
• Motion graphics, sound and video
• Increased control over design and especially typography

Flash can also accommodate functionality that cannot be achieved as well using other methods:

• Application interfaces that require variable graphics at run-time
• Remote calls to the server without page refresh
• Dynamic navigation menus

Some Considerations

Before using Flash there are some considerations to make. Flash introduces additional technology to the site architecture that requires the Flash Player Plug-in to be installed on the user’s computer. While Flash has considerable market penetration, over 90% for version 7.0, this still may present accessibility issues. The newest version of Flash, version 8.0, has significantly less market penetration.

Flash can also affect usability. When a site is built as one Flash movie in one web page, the browser’s back button is useless for returning to a previously viewed page in the site. This can be compensated for by additional programming, but most sites do not fix this usability issue. Building a site as one movie can also create a large initial load time. Some developers handle this gracefully with clever loaders, but this still makes a user wait.

Flash is more expensive to develop and more difficult to update. Animation sequences require a lot of man-hours to create and are subject to more revisions by clients because there are more details to criticize. Flash movies are compiled files, they cannot be directly edited. One must edit the source file and recompile the web formatted movie. This can be a real pain if you have other resources work on the site. Source files can be lost and fonts may not be available, making editing problematic.

Flash is often the best solution. Here are some useful benefits of using it in a site:

• If user experience is a big part of your site, nothing is better than Flash for creating awesome experiences. Cutting-edge sites combine interactivity, sound, and TV-like video presentation capturing the users’ attention.
• With all the recent hype about AJAX, Flash has been capable of making remote calls to the server for years. Rich Internet Applications provide great usability and experience.
• Flash is often more browser compatible for interface interactivity than DHTML.
• Displaying video as Flash is better than having a Windows Media Player, Real Player and QuickTime versions with the need for their respective player plug-ins.

Each version of Flash gets better with more features. ActionScript, Flash’s programming language, is more robust than ever. The seamless incorporation of video is revolutionary. As more users have the Flash Player plug-in, always consider Flash.

Benefits vs. Cost

When gathering requirements and planning a site, measure the benefits compared to the cost. Here are some specific requirements to consider:

• Will users have, or be able to install the Flash Player Plug-in?
• Is Flash going to create a technological roadblock to content within the site?
• Is Flash adding something special that cannot be done without it?
• Who will be making edits to content in the Flash movie(s) and how often does that occur? Flash can be developed to load data from external files which may overcome the need to recompile the web movie files. This should be considered if updating is a requirement.
• Do other developers working with the site have the necessary experience to successfully integrate and maintain the site containing Flash?
• Is the budget sufficient to create and implement Flash correctly?

Sometimes using Flash makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t, but one thing’s for sure there are more Flash sites than ever before and that trend isn’t going to change.