Flash??

how effective is flash animations?? do people even care about how flashy the site looks? Flash also probably takes up a lot of bandwidth as well so I do not know if it is even cost effective. Thoughts???

:beauty:

I don't want to get caught up in a Flash or no Flash debate (they're all over the place), but here's my two cents from a few point of views:

The Web developer: I like things that load fast, because that keeps people browsing, and when people browse my clients' sites that makes me happy (and paid). Depending on the amount of Flash, you could have no wait times, to literally minutes. Because it uses a third party browser plugin (albeit a well distributed one) it limits users. From a designer/developer point of view, if your website isn't advertising a media event, program, game, then Flash isn't the way to go. To get animations, rotating ads, and several other Flash-like features, you could use jQuery which loads much, much faster.

The Web browser: I use Firefox, and I always have the Flash block plugin active, which allows me to only run which Flash scripts I want to. You would not believe how much faster my web browser is. With multiple tabs open, multiple windows, multiple applications, I really don't want to stumble on a website that uses Flash heavily and chokes my browser up, then crashes it or makes it hang.

Flash has its uses, but everyday web browsing--even in the adult website industry--should not see heavy uses of it. (Movie Monster, are you listening?!?!)

If you do end up using Flash, view all parts of your site without Flash active and make sure all elements, content, etc., are viewable to those without Flash.

Awesome Thank you for your input! I never thought of all that! also, where would I get a flash blocker!? i never new something like that even existed!!

Ya I totally see what you are saying, for some people that do not have the fastest processing computers in the world it would be very difficult for them to get around. also if something takes too long to load then i usually do not even bother with it. I just move on to the next best thing that works and is fast!

Thank you for replying!


:yeah:

Well, it's not just having one Flash site open that can choke a computer.

I have a two week old Toshiba laptop that I use as my "Go Machine" that has 4 GB of RAM, a dual core 2.3 Ghz processor, and it does more than fine with most I can throw at it. But not everyone does. Even having, oh say, 12 xtube windows open can crash Firefox given that all the videos auto-start, all the ads are in Flash, etc., so you essentially have over 30 Flash animations playing at once...why add to that?

The Flashblock plugin is in the Firefox add-ons library.