How to Make a Flash Website


how-to-make-flash-website-1024x472 How to Make a Flash Website

Flash video allows for animation and video to be embedded into the web page. The scope of this article is not to be a bulleted list on how to make a Flash website, but rather to point toward resources on the process so the natural creativity and personality of the web site owner can shine through.

Flash can be a very powerful conversion tool when used right. Knowing the pros and cons of a Flash website can help you with your decision-making process.

Online Tutorials

There are several online tutorials available which outline the various ways of building a Flash website. Some will go over simple application like making a navigation menu. Others focus on how to create and embed animations. Then there are some tutorials for the highly adventurous that can enable the programmer to design and build a fully functional game site. By spending a little time browsing through these tutorials, not only can the website owner or programmer learn to create a flash website, but get their creative ideas flowing.

Everything is on YouTube

YouTube has become the go-to website for all video related things. Plenty of people have posted videos of how they build all sorts of fun things using Flash. For those that learn more from visual instruction instead of reading about it, this can shorten the learning curve considerably. However, again, the process of creating a flash website is similar no matter what it is you are trying to produce. The idea here is to see what others are doing so that you can take what you like and use it for yourself while developing your ideas.

Website Builders

Finally, we come to perhaps one of the best things of the information age, the website builder. Website builders meant creating a mundane site loaded with advertisements if you used their server for hosting. While the links are still there if you’re getting “free” hosting, the website building applications have come a long way. With the new generation of web site builders, you can make a professional looking website with borders, graphics, fully interactive menus, navigation bars, and even shopping carts. If you aim to have a good-looking website but doesn’t really care about “making it your own,” then a website builder is an excellent way to get one produced without knowing how to design a flash website.

No matter how intricate a website one wants to make, there is almost an infinite amount of resources that are available to learn how to make flash websites, or even build one with the ease of point and click menus. However, the most important aspect of any website is making it stand out from others, and that’s where the unique personality of the programmer or owner comes in. These resources can inspire unique ideas that can indeed make a site shine.

Pros of Using Flash

There are many reasons a web developer may want to create a flash website.

Cross-platform compatibility – A Flash player is available on almost all browsers. Therefore, videos can be viewed by anyone with the flash plugin.

Animations – Flash was initially built to create animations. Animations are easy to create and view in Flash.

Video – Playing a video in the Flash player does not require an operating system dependent media player plugin such as Windows Media Player or Apple’s QuickTime.

Games – Games created in Flash do not have bandwidth limitations like other server-side games.

Vector graphics – If developers have a vector-graphic tool they can design vector graphics which are more attractive to the naked eye.

Cons of Using Flash

Bandwidth and speed limitations – Without significant optimization, Flash applications take a long time to download, and consumers do not want to wait.

Impaired usability – Flash disables the back-button function which should take the consumer back before the Flash video started playing. However, if the video is playing and the consumer hits the button, they go back to the previous webpage before they landed on yours. Screen readers also cannot read a Flash website.

Search engines – Search engines determine where to rank a website by crawling it; however, they cannot read flash content such as images or follow non-HTML links. The only way for Flash websites to rank on search engines is to create an HTML site that mimics the flash site; this causes twice the work as they both have to be maintained.

Required plugins – If the flash plugin is not available on the consumer’s preferred web browser, it will have to be downloaded and installed. Some people do not want to install additional plugins.

Too much Flash – Due to the overwhelming amount of Flash banners and advertising, some people do not like Flash and will not navigate a Flash website.

Mobile devices compatibility – Flash plugins are not available on mobile devices.

Visit the Flash Animation and Media FAQ section of Flying Cow Design to know more about flash website and designing.

fb50c5bf790872a8ecad33a6bd15d358?s=100&d=mm&r=g How to Make a Flash Website

CEO, Flying Cow Design
Attended University of Auckland
Lives in San Francisco Bay Area

October 14th, 2016


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