Opinion on using Flash

Associate
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2 Aug 2005
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I just wondered if it's a good idea to include any flash on a website these days? Everything's heading towards standards compliance (which I think is great), but I'm not sure whether to use Flash as well. Thanks.
 

Nix

Nix

Soldato
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It depends on a few factors:

Personal Preference,
Target Audience,
What the site is about,
What content is on site...

...you get the picture.
 
Associate
OP
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Ok well it's for a business site, I want it to look very buzzy and it is very important that everyone (other businesses and people at home) can view it. It's just a company website which explains what we do. I wasn't thinking of making the whole site in Flash, just parts to add a little movement.
 

Nix

Nix

Soldato
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Well not everyone has flash installed. Why not try a healthy mix of both flash and HTML, CSS and PHP?
 
Soldato
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Location
London Town
theMAD2 said:
I wasn't thinking of making the whole site in Flash, just parts to add a little movement.
Flash is fine, as long as you keep to that rule. Avoid Flash for anything important, and use it only for enhancements as you would do when implementing Javascript features or presentational graphics e.g. not for navigation, content or input mechanisms. Provide a fallback mechanism so that those without Flash, have it disabled or otherwise can't use it don't have their ability to use the site comprimised. Remember that search engines don't have Flash, and search engines are typically a large percentage of a site's visitors.
 
Associate
OP
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That's it, maybe the banner or something just to add a little buzz. If the user doesn't have flash can you enter some sort of <noflash> tag?
 
Soldato
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Implementing Flash: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay/

Within the <object> element you can add alternative content, so that should the object/Flash fail to display, the alternative content will be rendered :).

Code:
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash data="c.swf?path=movie.swf" width="400" height="300">
<param name="movie" value="c.swf?path=movie.swf" />
[b][i]<img src="noflash.gif" width="200" height="100" alt="" />[/b][/i]
</object>
 
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