»»» Lets flash mx without getting naked!

Flash is fun, flash is amazing and flash is one of the hottest online visual experiences one can have. File sizes are relatively small and almost all browsers have the flash plugin pre installed.

So are you sold? Will you build a super flash website with animation, video effects, audio and character animation? Probably not...

Flash in my eye is an amazing tool, all the things I mentioned above are true & with little effort flash can tackle them all and kills any competition out there ( sorry livemotion but it's true! ).

Flash MX has recently come out on the market and has such fantastic things that can be done with it that I'm speechless when I see them. From dynamic content to interactive web design flash MX is a powerful tool. On it's own in a CD presentation or used online it s hot medium as a marketing tool. It surpasses boundaries because it's both visual & interactive.


But is flash right for your website? Does your client want animation, audio and to pay more for a design in the long run? Flash can do almost anything you want, err anything the programmer wants! That's right FlashMX uses a scripting type language similar to Javascript called Actionscript. Most of the smallest, effective and phenomenal designed Websites use actionscript to make it happen. So if you want a 2advanced.com type site be prepared to pay.

Flash still has some drawbacks in the design arena such as search engine friendliness. Since flash is comprised of one SFW ( flash movie ) or multiple flash SWF's and not HTML or ASP or PHP pages it's meta data wont be as strong as lets say Billy bob's website with 10 pages of truck photos. He'll have meta data that's relevant to each page, where the flash movie will only stay on one page with one set of meta data which stores the SWF.

LOL can you imaging what you client will say when he gets a spam email saying " Meta Tags are the only way to get to the top of the search engine! ". He'll call you freaking out , how will you respond?

Also flash is wonderful, but sometimes an image or movie just loops over and over.. this gets pretty annoying very fast. Will the visitor stay or move on to the next page?

Flash is awesome for DHTML advertisement and I think is a great addition to banner type advertising with the smaller file sizes and transparent backgrounds it floats on your screen and would surely generate ROI!!!

So flash is flashy, flash is smart, your Websites on the prototype stage how will you start?

Remember these 4 important facts when dealing with flash:

1 - Is it necessary to get the point across?
2 - Keep the browser/visitor in mind when designing with flash.
3 - Will search engines and meta data be important to the project?
4 - Can you wow them using flash without having a 24 megabyte file to download.

Until next time.. Have fun
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Written by Yury Rush Copyright (©) 2002 motionrush media labs (link)

Creative & Intelligent website design located In Sarasota, Bradenton, Venice Florida
Want this article for your website? Keep this resource box intact & Links
working & it's yours! www.motionrush.com
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