One of the hottest developments on the Internet has been the creation and use of Flash based animations. Ironically the load times of websites on the Internet have been going down even with the spread of broadband. Don’t make this mistake. Always be sure that the Flash movies on your website load as quickly as possible. You should pre-load and back-load larger movies whenever possible. Don’t assume your visitors will have tons of system resources to spare. Flash uses the visitor’s system resources, so it is possible to crash an old or heavily taxed computer by asking it to do too much of the processing for your animation. A good Flash designer understands this.
A website built entirely out of Flash with just an HTML wrapper, is rarely a good idea. Search engines will penalize you heavily, if they can even index your site at all. There are certain types of sites where designing your website entirely in of Flash might be a good idea, but this is usually not the case.
Using chunks of Flash embedded in standard HTML is almost always the way to go. This allows for a website that is easy for the search engine spiders to index, yet still allows almost the same design functionality of an all Flash site.
IE now displays a security message: click to activate and use this control, whenever a user hovers over a Flash movie. This has only recently become a problem. I can’t tell you how many websites that I visit suffering from this problem. To get rid of this annoying message you need to use a little piece JavaScript. See the end of this article for a link to download this fix.
Web animation of any kind should be used sparingly. There is a higher tolerance for animation on entertainment and pop culture websites, and less for corporate and resources sites. The golden rule here is nearly always going to be less is better than more. Don’t distract or annoy your visitor. If you need to get their attention, try a better static design first.
A smooth Flash movie that isn’t jerky or move too fast has much less chance of annoying or distracting your visitors. Don’t try to cram every scene and text element of the movie into a 10 second loop.
Try and use features that do not require the visitor have the latest Flash Player installed. I typically try to make sure I only use Flash features that have been supported for at least two versions, more if possible. Let someone else’s website force their visitors to upgrade their Flash Player. Your goal is to keep your visitors time at your website as productive and easy as possible.
Have quality flash movies and videos. If I do have to wait a few seconds to see a Flash movie, I want it to be worth the wait. This almost always means hiring a professional flash designer. Flash is a very complicated program with a very steep learning curve. Don’t waste your time beating your head against the wall. Focus on your core business and let a professional handle this part.
