Flash Site Design

Have you noticed that web sites are becoming more animated, more clickable and offer the user a more immersive web experience?

Chances are, the new sites you are seeing are built using the Adobe Flash platform. Did you know that TurnKey Creations has the ability to create your web site in Flash?

Flash has come a long way from what was once purely a method of media delivery; It now has the capability to be the foundation of entire sites. Experts used to scoff at the notion of an all Flash site. But Flash site development has gained speed at a rapid pace in the last couple of years. Some of the advantages of a Flash site:

• Typography. Does your company use a specific font to get its message across? Fonts can now be embedded into the Flash file, making your site look like an extension of your marketing materials. This allows greater creativity and cross-platform (print, media, web) continuity. In addition, Flash CS5 contains a new text engine that mirrors InDesign, Adobe's publication lay-out software.
• Compatibility. The Flash player is a standalone plug-in for browsers. Currently, Flash plays well with 98% of the browsers on the market.
• Availability. A September 2010 survey conducted by Millward Brown concluded that 99% of the computers in the developed world connected to the internet contain the Adobe Flash Player. This compares with only 58% for the Apple QuickTime Player and 28% for Real One Player.
• Video. Video works well in Flash applications because it doesn't require an OS-dependent plug-in like QuickTime or MediaPlayer.

We've all heard the excuses not to use Flash: Search engine recognition, takes up too many system resources to use, not updateable. The truth is, many of these problems have been fixed with the later versions of Flash or the Flash Player.

The Flash file itself is just a movie with a series of stops and instructions. While search engines may not have the capabilities to crawl into these movies right now, there are effective ways around this. The site still has an HTML index file, just like every other web site in the world. The same keywords and formatting go here. This allows search engines to find your all Flash site. External documents like PDF's also help web crawlers to find your site.

Flash sites can contain links to external text boxes. This allows easy updates to the text via a simple notepad application  that comes  free with most operating systems. The latest Flash Player release changes the way the Flash file uses your systems resources. The new version uses up to 60% less memory and processor functions, resulting in smoother animations or video delivery.

TurnKey creations has a couple of exciting Flash-based sites in the works. We would like to share one of them with you now. Visit http://www.makeeverythingcount.com for our latest all-Flash creation. It features text boxes linked externally for easy updates later and an XML based 3D photo wall that allows us to add more pictures at a later date, without opening the Flash file itself.