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The last five years has seen an exponential growth in the use
of shockwave and flash animations in creating websites. The old
tried and trusted techniques such as D/HTML are slowy moving
over to make room for this newer multimedia delivery vehicle.
Scripting, such as Javascript, is viewed with disdain by some
and ignored by others. Yet the people who advocate the use of
flash/shockwave in creating multimedia-rich sites are not asking
the right question: Is all that glitters gold?
An important facet of flash / shockwave glossed over by most
people is that these technologies are a packaged scripting
environment: In other words - most of what you can do in flash,
you can do in DHTMl with a liitle effort. A question that pops
up at this stage is: Why would I want to go through all of that?
The answer is simple and is illustrated by way of practical
example.
Pick a topic - any topic - and type the relevant seach keywords
into your favorite search engine. Now try to find a flash site
under the first thirty results. You will be surprised to find
that this 'silver bullet' of web design does not even feature.
The majority of search engines do not support the indexing of
shockwave / flash sites - this can have a detrimental effect on
your Internet business if you rely on search engine traffic to
generate revenue. Remember one thing: Content is king and the
only recognised content is in HTML pages.
Bells & Whistles: Where, When and What
Deploying rich multimedia sites are becoming more and more a
design requirement. However, the objective of your site should
be the determining factor between using D/HTML or Flash for
multimedia content. Exposure and the generation of revenue
solidly discounts the use of Flash as the major site component -
search placement is too important to sacrifice for a simple
thing such shiny buttons. D/HTML provides an attractive
alternative to ensuring that your site is indexed properly by
search engines.
However, Flash should not be put out to pasture based on this:
Limited Flash content can still be an asset on your Internet
presence if used judisciously. Corporate Intranets are another
matter entirely: Flash provides the perfect delivery vehicle for
rich business applications, where DHTML would be more of a
liability than an asset - e.g. training material, presentations
and etcetera.
In conclusion, the objective of a site should determine which of
the two technologies are the preferred medium for mutimedia
delivery.
About the author:
Riaan Pieterse is the CEO and founder of Kerberos Internet
Services CC, South Africa. Having spent a number of years
conducting various consulting assignments in the Far East,
Middle East, Africa and Europe to businesses and governments
alike, Riaan has a solid understanding of the business and
technology issues in today's market.
For more information visit http://www.kerberosdev.net
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