Adding Flash 4 to your websiteWritten by Robert Walters
Macromedia has taken 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 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 technical jargon. Flash creates graphics in what is called a vector format. Meaning that unlike gifs or jpegs, which remember each pixel in graphic, vectors remember mathematical equation of graphic and 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 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 following apply to YOUR site?Difficult to see from top half of page (ie, that part that first comes into view in my browser window) exactly what it is that site is meant to be promoting. - if it is not clear from what can be seen in browser window 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 top of your home page should be a headline/paragraph which answers 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 answer to my question? Loads slowly - if visitors have to wait too long for site to download, chances are that they will close 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 casual visitor, don't bother - or at least offer them opportunity to be able to skip presentation.
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