Tips and Considerations for Flash Design
At the 3 Magic Beans, we pride ourselves on telling stories through our designs here in Denver, CO. A very important piece of storytelling online is the electronic medium used to get that story across. One of the most popular mediums these days is Flash which can provide an excellent opportunity to create the optimum experience for the end client when used correctly. In this post, we’ve researched some quality references on considerations for Flash usage.
For the best recommendations on when and how to use Flash, I immediately go to the source, Adobe, for their thoughts. They do have a vested interest however and are not the only source of quality recommendations. “Using text and text equivalents – Flash designers and developers can create engaging and exciting content for users of screen readers and other assistive technologies.” So it’s important not to keep all users in mind.
“Flash is ideal for developing rich, eye-catching content, such as skyscraper adverts, banner ads, and promotions. Use Flash sparingly for when it offers an advantage over other media. If you can achieve the same results with an animated GIF or style sheets, then use them and save the Flash for another section.”
The Nielson Norman Group has set out to create the end all discussion report in their Suggested usability Guidelines for Flash. This report is based on usability research with 46 different Web-based applications in Flash that were tested with users in the United States, Germany, and Japan. Great resource.
“Is Flash going help me in communicating with my audience? The first thing you need to decide is whether or not it makes sense to use Flash. Will you be able to communicate better with your audience in how you address their concerns? You need to keep users’ needs and perspective in mind at all times.”
“Some users do not even have the software installed necessary to view Flash. If they do not have the Flash Player, then they will not be able to see any part of a Flash website. These users are incapable of seeing the website whether they want to or not: another lost customer.”
“Take websites that are fully fleshed out in Flash. A lot of these websites require hovering a cursor over menus. In a lot of cases, clicking the menu item takes you to a certain page and hovering over it reveals a submenu. This presents a huge problem to the interaction on a touch-screen device like iPad.”
Doing too much in Flash will sacrifice exposure on the search engines. In other words, the engines will not have enough text on which to base their indexing. If access to your site through the search engines is important to your success, be sure that you don’t overdo it on the Flash side.
As you can see, there are several considerations to take into account when designing a site or an ad campaign. So don’t take your investment lightly by accomplishing only some of your online marketing goals with Flash and contact the 3 Magic Beans in Denver, Colorado.
Sincerely,
3 Magic Beans
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