It is considered to be one of the biggest, if not biggest, platforms where internet media is concerned.
Flash can be used for audio, video, animations, applications, and even website interactivity.
It's also used for the delivery of advertisements.
Flash files can be played by various operating systems and browsers, and even on mobile devices (with the exception of some, such as Apple mobile devices) with the aid of the Flash Player plugin.
Most people don't care about the inner workings of Flash as long as it does what they want.
So, I'll spare the details and there are plenty of documents floating around explaining the technicalities.
What I will tell you is what most people need to know about Flash when designing or adding content to their site.
Flash almost does everything and is most widely used for animations, such as slideshows and popups.
I used those examples for a very specific reason.
Flash SHOULD NOT be used for basic animations like those.
It is completely UNNECESSARY.
The Flash Player is not exactly a light program.
It can be resource hungry, which means that it significantly hinders the performance of a computer.
For this reason, you should only you use Flash when it's the only way.
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise! There are a lot of web designers out there that use Flash for even the most basic tasks because it's easy for them to create and they're not well versed in coding.
Basic animations can be created using JavaScript, cutting down on unnecessary loading times.
Flash should be used for video/audio, complex animations, and complex interactivity (such as games).
When it comes to these tasks, Flash is much more efficient than JavaScript.
The weirdest thing I come across all the time is websites that are entirely done in Flash.
Most of the time, it's a regular website with no animations or special interactivity.
This is horrible for several reasons.
Unless you have the Adobe Flash software, which is expensive, content can't be edited as easily.
Since the website is one big file, users can't bookmark a particular page that they would be interested in.
Let's not forget about the all-important loading time, which would be noticeably longer.
Having an entire website in Flash also hurts SEO.
Search engines index website pages by going through the content.
Pages that have Flash within them still can be indexed properly, whereas a Flash page (big difference) has content that can't be seen by search engines.
Because of this, certain tricks have to be used, such as duplicating the content just for your website to be SEO friendly.
That creates a lot of tedious, unnecessary work if you ask me that will end up with you wasting money.
Flash is a great tool to engage your audience, but it should only be used when it's the best tool for the job and only when necessary.
Remember not all devices support Flash, like the Apple iPad.
Not having support, means that anything done in Flash doesn't show up at all.
In less than a year, 14.
8 million units have been sold.
Your content should be viewable on as any devices as possible.
Do you really want to lock out millions from your content? http://www.
illuvation.
com/blog/2011/02/09/what-you-dont-know-about-flash/