So you know Flash can be used for bad things, but you think your
website would really benefit from it. Well, while you need to
know what you're doing, there's absolutely no reason why Flash
can't be used entirely sensibly, to make your website better and
provide useful information or entertainment for your visitors.
So, in this article, let's take a look at the things Flash is
suited for.
Games
Flash's number one use is games, where it's simply the best
solution for the web. The alternative, really, is the
slow-loading, ugly Java disaster, and there's just no contest.
Flash lets you easily provide interactive games that go far
beyond anything that could ever be done in HTML or DHTML, with
Flash's slick animation capabilities producing a well-recognised
graphical format that many feel to be ideal for small games,
especially puzzles and 'classic' games.
Make no mistake: all the most popular games on the web are
offered in a Flash version, perhaps with a downloadable version
for purchase alongside. People don't want to go to the trouble
of downloading and running programs just to play games,
especially considering that what they're downloading could be a
virus - Flash is the ideal solution here.
Cartoons
Another format that Flash is very good for is entirely
non-interactive cartoons - take a look at homestarrunner.com for
a famous example. Flash's bold lines and easy animation tools
give Flash cartoons a distinct style, and make it easy to create
long-running cartoon series.
Once you get used to the 'Flash look', you might even notice
that some of the cartoons on TV nowadays have it too. That's
because plenty of 'real' cartoons are now produced with Flash,
since it makes it so easy to animate things on a computer
without having to send off hand-drawn scenes to be animated.
Statistical Presentation
By this point, you might be thinking that the only good uses of
Flash seem to be for kids. Well, you'd be wrong. Flash is also a
very good tool for presenting statistics in a creative way: the
way that it lets you produce graphics easily from numbers and
scripts makes it an ideal tool for this. There are plenty of
websites out there with dull Excel-produced charts and graphs
that would really benefit from a Flash makeover.
When you do this, though, do be careful of using excessive
animation. Sure, it's fine for the bars of a chart to grow until
they reach where they should be, but don't do it too slowly, or
you'll lose the audience in the process. Likewise, never move
things around without input from the user - the reaction that
tends to provoke is "hey, I was looking at that!" If you keep
your Flash sober, restrained and relatively static, though, it
can be a real winner for this kind of application.
Used properly, then, Flash can be just as effective for
real-time stock market data as it is for games and animations -
which makes it a very unusual kind of program. This is part of
the power of Flash, and the reason it survives on the web today,
despite its more annoying uses.
A Word of Warning
However, before you do use Flash for any of the things listed
above, it's worth noting that your visitors still won't like
coming across it unexpectedly, no matter how nice a use you put
it to. For this reason, you should always label links that go to
a page with Flash with the word 'Flash' in brackets, like this:
Watch our latest cartoon [Flash] See our performance projections
[Flash]
If you don't do this, you'll get just as many back-button
clickers as you would with any other Flash - when users don't
know what's coming and something unexpected happens, their
instinct is to panic and get out of there as soon as they can.
If you make sure that your site is predictable and always keeps
them informed of where they're going next, then you'll make them
much happier.
About the author:
Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain
Services
Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.
