Flash Flash!

I’m sure at one point or another you will have come across a website that seems to have it all, the glamour, the dazzle, the wild animation of a skeleton doing the Moonwalk. But just how appropriate is it for your website to have such novelties?

Most likely the website you are looking at will have been done using elements of Flash, requiring the user to have Flash player installed on their computers. Some sites even go as far as being completely built using Flash, which is not really recommended, reason being it’s not ideal for SEO. Effectively what you have is pretty much a one page website.

Then there’s the fact that large amounts of animation could overwhelm the use; how are they supposed to focus on the information on offer when the vertigo-inducing loop on show is too distracting? That said, using flash subtly in your xhtml website can work to your advantages, perhaps adding a bit of elegance.

So yes, use Flash if you’d like, just don’t overdo the “bling bling”.