All Flash, little bang

If you have ever visited You Tube you have seen a small example of Flash.  This Adobe creation is dandy for putting video on the web just about anywhere you’d want it.  In fact, there will eventually be some small flash vids on the sites I have here.  The video files are small compared to some of the other formats, and the “progressive download” nature of the beast means that videos can begin playing before they are completely downloaded (though having the video stop every few seconds while the file “buffers” is annoying on slower connections).

Within the last few years there has been a trend (still small, but growing) of creating entire websites in Flash.  This is done by creating the pages in an Action Script code, then compiling the code into a Flash SWF (a type of Flash file) that is then played through the Flash movie player (currently version 10.x). There are some interesting advantages to that, mostly for developers (primarily, that no one can see or steal your coding).

But, there are some dis-advantages, too.  One of my pet peeves is that the scroll-wheel on my mouse doesn’t work on the Flash player.  Not such a big deal when the player only takes up a part of the page, but really annoying when the entire page is a Flash player.  Another thing that doesn’t work is the “auto-fill” function of my browsers (IE8, FireFox, and Chrome).  I rely on that function to speed my logins for the sites I work on.  I’m sure these issues will be cured eventually, but even if they are no longer issues for new sites it’s likely that existing sites won’t get fixed any time soon: that will cost money!

I’m also not keen on the idea of having to have a proprietary player to see a web page.  Sure, it’s given away freely for the client (your browser).  But for how long?  And, not only are there occasional glitches with the latest version, there may be some security issues as well, issues that may not be readily visible.

Another issue is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.  Because the Flash page code is closed to view, the search spiders don’t know when content is updated.  They are curious when new pages appear, but lose interest after a while because nothing seems to change.  I don’t think that’s too helpful.

Finally, to develop a Flash website requires either a working knowledge of Action Script (AS3 is the latest) and a development environment such as Eclipse or Flash Develop (both excellent open-source tools) or shelling out the cash for Adobe’s Flash Builder ($699.00!) and maybe a few more expensive applications if you want to go whole-hog (Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, etc…, the CS5 packages start at $1899.00).

There are some options emerging, and I am playing with a couple: AuroraFlash and Silex.  Both are Flash Content Management Systems (CMSs) that by-pass the coding and just require installation to begin building your site.  Silex goes on your host, Aurora installs to your computer and creates the files and folders that you upload.  So far, I find that any changes you want to make in Aurora require uploading new files and Silex hasn’t got an intuitive method of adding or editing text content.

If you are interested in alternatives to Flash, feel free to ask: jeff@jeffdoesit.biz