Night
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Creativity Heaven
Let me tell you why I ♥ Flash.
When I first began making websites, there were extreme limitations on creativity. Only a handful of colors could be trusted to render consistently on the monitors and operating systems in use. Dial-up was agonizingly slow, so graphics (typically large files) had to be kept to a minimum. CSS did not yet exist, so all layouts were done using tables, making precise placement of graphic elements impossible. Browsers did not adhere to web standards, making complex layouts a nightmare to code. We've come so far so quickly. Now we have millions of available colors, most users have broadband connections, CSS has freed us from the restrictions of table layouts, we have pixel-level precision placement of page elements, and even Microsoft browsers play by the rules. However, there are still limitations and hassles inherent in contemporary web design that restrict creativity. Flash transcends these limits.
Transparency: Until the introduction of Internet Explorer 7, you could not reliably use the PNG graphic format. If you want beautiful transparency in a graphical element, PNG is the way to go. Flash has long supported this format, and it makes working with transparency a sheer delight (forgive pun).
Free-form Shapes: Want a button shaped like a hummingbird? Want all kinds of crazy clickable curves? You can make these things without Flash using an image map, but oh! is that ever a piece of work. Flash does all the required math automatically behind the scenes, leaving designers free to just design.
Infinite Fonts: Only a handful of fonts are supported by web browsers, and even those are not fully controllable. If your computer system doesn't have, say, the Georgia font, your browser will substitute something like Times New Roman. With Flash, a designer can incorporate ANY font into a website, fully control its appearance, and in some cases even have the content indexed by Google. This technology is still in its infancy, but it's definitely pushing back the horizon. The alternative is to use an ordinary graphic image to render a special font, and this can definitely present major SEO challenges.
Oh, Yes, the Obvious - Animation: Transparency, free-form shapes, infinite fonts are all creatively liberating, but the heart of Flash is animation. Need that partially transparent hummingbird to hover and flit around the letter H rendered in 14-point Exotic Bold? You've got it!
Imagination Station: Flash is one of those tools that has practically unlimited potential, and every Adobe upgrade adds functionality. It's pretty much a case of "if you can imagine it, you can do it." Interactivity, games, image galleries, presentations, graphs, charts, advertising, page accents are just the beginning. As time permits, I will be adding more Flash demos to this section of the website. They're truly a joy to create.
The Flaws: There's always a downside, right? While much progress has been made towards the indexing of Flash content by search engines, we're not quite there yet. If search engine ranking is of utmost importance, better forego Flash for critical content. Also, sad to say, not everyone has Flash installed on their computer, and some mobile devices do not support Flash. Additionally, the best way to embed Flash content in a web page is with JavaScript, and some people disable it. For these reasons, my preference is to limit Flash use to inessentials unless it's feasible to create a viable non-Flash fallback.
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