Thread: Flash - stylish or problematic?

I was looking into making a new flash website for one of my domains and was wondering what people's opinions of flash websites are, and also how hard they are to create. I have a limited knowledge of flash, so would have to basically learn it from scratch.

I often find flash sites take a long time to load, so i presume I'd need a fast server, which I do have. The average internet connection is getting faster by the day. I was looking at flash more from the idea that it will retain and interest new users, but they could be put off by the slow load times, I guess?

Help and opinions would be much appreciated!

Up until now, I still find flash made sites impressive and splendid. However, when I come to think of SEO, flash pages seem to shy away.. A lot of webmasters including me would still consider html codes to control graphics and flashy effects (css) as it has the crawlability advantage which SE bots find it more easy to understand and analyze than that of flash pages.

You can have flash as an embedded object on your site. But I don't think it's wise to make a flash operated site as bots would only see flash codes not what it delivers (the content).

Anyways, it looks like google is trying to read flash contents. Check here.

But I would still go for anything not flash. Though not that splendid, but my site can still be flashy with css and photoshop.

Great post, thanks. I've been playing around using Photoshop for my websites and it seems to be coming out well, so I may stick to that, but I guess I could also incorperate a small amount of flash into my site and then it would still be crawled etc.

You can also consider that some peoples doesn't enable flash in theirs browsers (I'm one of them), mostly because some sites have very annoying and noisy flash ads. When I visit a website that is fully designed in flash or if the main navigation menu is in flash I simply close the browser window.

As regmac said, you can implement some flashy effects without actually using flash (script.aculo.us is one of the great scripts you can use).

Yes flash files always takes time to load in browser and mostly it depends upon the visitor's connection speed and many of visitors can wait too much time to load a page they simply close it so if you planned to make a flash site then you can simply optimize it too by using the flash optimizer!!!

Flash can make a great addition to any website if you manage to intergrate it well, but you have to be very careful. If there's too many flashy parts people might leave before they've seen the content you offer on your website. I've read on another forum that studies have proven that a lot of flash does more harm than good.

This article discusses the new features in Flash CS3 Professional and how they compare to similar features in Flash 8, or how they have changed. Therefore, it's written with the assumption that you're already somewhat familiar with Flash. If you are a Flashthusiast ready to update to Flash CS3, read on.

You could choose flash cutting for a website layout. For example, you can add a flash header -> nothing bigget than 20-30 kb and the rest of the content in xhml & css to make it stylish.

Flash is not a need, but an option and its all about you using it on the page. Eventually, you may need to add a flash banner or an embbemed script...

Dear Sabre,

Flash websites seeks everybody's attention when viewed, but the major problem is it will take much time to load and it wont prove helpful to you in SEO. I mean it will difficult for you to gain results in Google search...

It's an interesting idea, for sure. I agree with the majority of it, it seems to make sense. I like the way you present the post.Very clear and useful for a newbie like me.