Flash Vs CSS – Part 1

by mauricesvay

Flash Vs CSS – Part 1

Flash vs XHTML.

This article will outline the difference in capability between Flash and CSS/HTML. Both forms of web design are powerful yet which is the one that is most suitable to use within a design environment, which one will be suitable for client project and which one will get you found on search engines like Google and Yahoo.

So, what can Flash do? What can this Adobe vector based program give us that XHTML cant? Predominantly it gives a designer freedom. It gives the designer freedom to place graphics around the page wherever they want without having to worry about tables, absolute positioning, inconsistencies across numerous browsers, tables in tables, frames or anything like that! You place the image where you want and that’s it! Done! You are free as a designer!

It is important to realise that this is not just a simple little perk to using flash. Freedom on the web is what designers have wanted since the inception of the internet. Flash was the first of its kind and still offers incredible design opportunities. You can pretty much do anything you want. Your flash animation will load correctly in any browser depending on whether they have the flash plugin of course. It will not look different in any browser which saves so much time being a designer.

Flash enables enhanced interactivity around the site. This could literally be anything you want. ANYTHING. We are not talking about little button rollovers. Adding music, video, several animations running at the same time is all possible within the realms of flash. The sky is the limit and really comes down to how good you are at using the program. Additionally the integration of several file types is perfectly acceptable. Image files such as GIF, JPEG, PNG, PCT, TIF and vector based files such as EPS are all easily implemented onto flash. No problem. The same goes for font, you will never need to embed a font onsite to download it as the flash file itself is self contained. This also applies for movie files and loading.

So I have outlined the very brief advantages of using flash so now I want to outline the disadvantages. The biggest of all is that you need a plugin to run the flash file on your computer. Not all home PC’s will have flash or even know what it is so you are risking the fact that no one will be able to see your site at all. Secondly, SEO is practically impossible when using Actionscript 2. Flash is not designed to embrace SEO and vice versa. However, recent developments on both fronts have started to change this. Actionscript 3 has given the chance to Flash users of implementing meta data and other search engine friendly techniques. It is a recurring issue that Adobe are dealing with and it is something that you will see change in the near future.

Video compression and playback function sin flash are not as good quality as some of the players developed exclusively for this purpose alone such as Quicktime. For examples, Flash video does not take advantage of enhanced video drivers for optimized playback at enlarged sizes which can cause problems.

Check this out in higher res here: www.tutvid.com In this video we will start with a folder of images and in about 30 minutes construct a very simple 2 column layout using CSS to style our page! We will learn all about using divs, creating CSS rules, targeting divs, creating a background, and so much more! Start learning to harness the raw power of Cascading Style Sheets to create, layout, and style your web pages today! Files for this video are here: www.tutvid.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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1. Flash Vs CSS – Part 2
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3. Why You Should CSS Instead of Tables When Designing Your Web Page
4. CSS Bases Joomla Templates
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