Flash Content

Flash content within websites can be used for many different important purposes from background aesthetics to set a certain mood, to interactive applications. Used well it can significantly add to the user experience of a website and can provide a more effortless means of communicating with visitors.

Examples of Flash Use

Victoria Ruby
www.victoriaruby.co.uk

This website incorporates a full featured flash gallery to showcase the client's artwork. This flash application was designed and programmed specifically for this website and includes:

• The ability to add additional images to the gallery quickly
• A vertical custom designed scroll bar to the side of the main display area
• A faded transition effect between images
• An image loading progress bar for when images load for the first time on slower connections

Badger Bushcraft
www.badgerbushcraft.com

In this website a full width banner scrolls across the top of each page in increments. A picture speaks a thousand words, and a carefully selected mix can provide a clear summary of the company within a few seconds. This flash element has been well optimised for use on each page of the site so as not to impact unduly on load times.

Pluckly Farm Shop
www.pluckleyfarmshop.co.uk

A simple use of flash to give a relaxed and stylish feeling for the site. This flash component is a smoothly transitioned slideshow covering the main areas of the business giving visitors to the site an immediate feel for the range and quality of products sold.

Bright Sparks Bushcraft
www.brightsparksbushcraft.co.uk

A more complex flash application that runs through a series of animated frames which summarise the activities of the business. Being larger in size and rather complicated this type of application is best suited to being located on one page, as it will impact a little on page load times. It is also a little distracting for use on each page, but again provides an effective overview of the site which is quite effortless for visitors.

Adam Sumner Design
www.adamsumnerdesign.com/

I have constructed an animated slideshow application for the home page of this website. This flash component has been designed to demonstrate the summarising of a site in a rather small area and in a relatively short period. It also uses controls to interact with the application, allowing visitors to pause the animation on a particular frame and to move directly to a desired slide.

Flash Content & Search Engine Optimisation

Flash content can undoubtedly be a very useful tool, however, it is not visible to search engines and can significantly slow page load times. These factors can result in very poor performance in search engines if flash is over-used in a website. In addition to this, visitors to your website that use browsers without the flash plug-in, or devices that do not support flash, such as iphones, will not be able to view that content.

Alternative static content can be provided for these none flash browsers and devices, however, for flash based websites this can slow page load times further, which can put off many visitors and can impact on search engine performance.

For these reasons I recommend that flash is used sparingly for specific purposes and incorporated within mainly HTML or PHP websites.