Flash is a great way to increase your website popularity because it adds a lot of great graphical flexibility and can be really fun to use. But Flash can also drive readers away. If you are considering moving your site over to a Flash-based design you should consider all the pros and cons to using Flash before making the switch. Flash sites aren't for everyone, and you should make your decision based on your knowledge of your customers and what they want from your site.
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I have to strongly agree with the comment about not using Flash for Navigation. A non-profit group I was with had hired a graphic design group to rebuild our website to include video. They immediately said Flash was the tool to use. What we got was the entire website including navigation in Flash. The non-flash browsers got a “Sorry, you need Flash” screen. Since we got the design at a non-profit discount we were stuck trying to correct mistakes, change navigation, etc. which was not easy with Flash MX. Flash may be a great tool for animation and video, but this experience left a bad taste for using Flash. I guess I’d rather stick with plain HTML/CSS to get the right online brochure look and feel and provide links to video, music, etc. I personally get annoyed with looking for the “skip intro” button (if the Flash designer even included it.) If you have to design in alternate webpages or escape buttons, I think you should question the real value to your customers. To web designers I say “Don’t add Flash only to pad your portfolio.” Do it if Flash makes sense to the website customer.
In this day and age, with the flexibility of CSS based design there is very little reason to create a website that is entirely flash based. Even when adding rich media to a site it should still be created as an element within an html page. That keep search engines and visitors much happier.
To clients: make sure that large scal;e flash elements are the way forward for you. DOn’t get bamboozled by someone who just wants to do flash, ask them in detail about the alternatives.
To Designers: Get to grips with all the tools available, at least to the extent that you undersdtand enough to bring an expert in on a project is you can’t do it (or don’t have time) yourself. Give your clients what they genuinely need and they’ll be happy clients (who pay bills and give you more work).
The bottom line is that flash is a fantastic tool, but only when used correctly. A note to the wise… even Adobe’s own website is not entirely flash, but it is used to add rich interactive content where there is a benefit…
Anyway, that’s enough ranting from me
Yeah…what Keith said…
The main method for search engines to index sites is based on the textual content. Converting your site to flash essentially makes all that lovely content unreadable for search engines, as a result, unless you are a very well known company with a lot of back links, people will have an extremely hard time finding your site through a standard search.
I wrote an article of how to implement Flash correctly within websites so that you truly understand its capabilities:
Flash Article
Cheers,
Gorka