Web Design: Adding Flash 4 to your website

Adding Flash 4 to your website

Written by Robert Walters

Macromedia has taken repparttar

internet world by storm with its introduction of Flash a few years ago. What started as an animation tool has evolved into a full website development tool. After clinching several deals with major supporters like Microsoft and AOL repparttar 134655

flash plugin is now standard on most browsers and is installed on 80% of them worldwide. What this means to you is that if you build it surfers will come. After reading this article you should have a better understanding of how Flash works, where to get a demo version, and how to get free flash programs to run on your website. First let's get through repparttar 134656

technical jargon. Flash creates graphics in what is called a vector format. Meaning that unlike gifs or jpegs, which remember each pixel in repparttar 134657

graphic, vectors remember repparttar 134658

mathematical equation of repparttar 134659

graphic and repparttar 134660

color that fills it. Therefore vector graphics are usually smaller in file size and can be scaled to any monitor size without any loss of quality. Gifs and jpegs get blurry when made larger . Since flash is just a series of mathematical equations and formulas full Flash 4 interfaces can be as small as 20 kilobytes. The newest version of Flash is number 4. Unlike its predecessors Flash 4 has most and if not more functionality than java, javascript, and dynamic html. Flash 4 goes beyond animation and allows you to have drag and drop interfaces, rollovers, input forms, drop-down menus, and database

Do visitors leave YOUR site feeling confused?

Written by Tony Murtagh

I recently spent a little time surfing repparttar

web looking at general web marketing and promotion sites and was somewhat surprised at how many were making what I consider, basic design mistakes. How many of repparttar 134654

following apply to YOUR site?

Difficult to see from repparttar 134655 top half of repparttar 134656 page (ie, that part that first comes into view in my browser window) exactly what it is that repparttar 134657 site is meant to be promoting.

- if it is not clear from what can be seen in repparttar 134658 browser window repparttar 134659 average visitor will move on.

- some sites were so full of banners, news headlines and various other links that it was impossible to know what they were offering. Some were in fact offering marketing services, some provision of news services, while others were even offering web design services - no thank you!

At repparttar 134660 top of your home page should be a headline/paragraph which answers repparttar 134661 visitors most important question "What's in it for me?" What is this site offering that will improve my business? Make my life easier? Earn me some money? Provide repparttar 134662 answer to my question?

Loads slowly - if visitors have to wait too long for repparttar 134663 site to download, repparttar 134664 chances are that they will close repparttar 134665 page and move on. If you must have lots of graphics on your site, use a gif optimisation tool.

Flash presentations - they are great if you are doing an offline presentation to a captive audience, or if your visitors are coming to your site for a specific reason - but if you are hoping to catch repparttar 134666 casual visitor, don't bother - or at least offer them repparttar 134667 opportunity to be able to skip repparttar 134668 presentation.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>