Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only anticipate there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. Nevertheless, Flash based sites have been disputed to be swollen and unneeded. Where precisely do we draw a line? Here’s a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity

Flash’s Actionscript opens up a huge field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to produce interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors going back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to concern about cross-browser compatibility. No more sufferings over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can take advantage of its animating features to express a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and therefore smaller file sizes) as contrary to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player ahead before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be conformable to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in extra work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content. Therefore, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and a few visitors might just miss their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only if you utterly need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.