subject: Ups and Downs of Using Flash Web Design [print this page] Ups and Downs of Using Flash Web Design Ups and Downs of Using Flash Web Design
In the previous decade, flash web design has been the go-to format for many designers, developers and companies. It gives your site a sleek, suave, and superbly aesthetic aura. Flash is a web format used to display content on a web browser. It allows you to graphically present a web page more attractively contrary to the text-based HTML coded approach to creating a page. It also allows animation on banners, website titles, and even menus. In short, it is a graphic plus factor to use flash. But it has ups and downs.
On top of the advantages mentioned earlier, if you are using flash in your website, you have this reputation of being "cool" and top of the line. It works best for company websites that cater to the entertainment, gaming, or fashion industry.
There are websites built entirely of flash. Websites of bands or recording companies use this format. A particular advantage is the hidden embedding of audio files since these are audio related websites. You cannot easily grab or get the source code of the site as opposed to an HTML written website that displays the source code.
But flash is not for everyone though. Since it is not a text based format, it is unfriendly to search engines, making it difficult, if not impossible, to be seen on Google results. Blogs, news sites, portals, online stores, review websites and the like are those that work best in non-flash formats.
It is not bad to use flash though. You have to know the nature of your website before deciding on using the format. You can still use flash on some parts of your site like perhaps your header. Knowing these ups and downs should help you in balancing your site's aesthetics and visibility in search engines.
