Using Flash on Websites

Flash on Websites

An increasing trend I've noticed is the website owner adding flash intros to their websites. Now this doesn't have to be an altogether bad thing, however when the intro doesn't serve a point beyond that of flashing text and graphics and concludes with "Click here to enter site" then we have problems. Someone is already on your site, you did it Congratulations, you advertised your site to the point where someone came to your site and now you want to place a barrier in their way before they can actually see your site. Not the best way to welcome someone to your site.

Flash can be used and used successfully on websites if done properly. I personally use flash to enhance pages with animations or interactive navigations. And then of course there are online flash games. Rarely will I build an entire site in flash, the negatives drastically outweigh the positives in my experiences. The biggest downside to using flash to create your entire site is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It is much harder to rank a flash based site high in SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) then that of it's text based comparison. Yes, you can rank flash based sites but it is much harder to do successfully.

If you are using flash on your website make sure you update your code to work with the updated Microsoft Internet Explorer work around. The fix will enable users to view and use flash without seeing "Click to activate and use this control".

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