The short answer is ?Maybe? The long answer is that the question might better be ?Is a 100% FLASH website appropriate in business?? The answer to this question is ?In my humble opinion, absolutely not?. In fact, we have had several clients with 100% FLASH websites to completely remake their websites because they simply do not work. Issues are with search engines and with clients who can?t see their websites.

Of course, FLASH sites do work in terms of visuals. Visit a FLASH website you will see striking visuals. But even if a visitor can see a website it doesn?t automatically mean that the website is going to create business for you, and often surfers cannot even see a FLASH site or locate one via search engines.

WHAT IS FLASH?
FLASH is technology developed by Macromedia, a leader in web development tools. FLASH movies are a compilation of many images, elements and text compiled into a nice, tight little digital file that that can he loaded onto the internet. Some designers build entire websites using this technology. Graphic designers quite like the technology because it gives them a great opportunity to show their talent for developing interactive, animated - and, quite honestly, some very entertaining - websites. Remember though, that the purpose of your business website is communication with your existing and prospective clients, not to show everyone what a talented designer you hired.

WHAT IS FLASH GOOD FOR? FLASH is excellent as an add-on element for some graphical components of a business website. Combining digital audio and video into FLASH movies has been simplified recently for webmasters, and using FLASH to stream video is a perfect use for FLASH in a business website. Another example of FLASH well used and well received is on websites about presentation rather than information. For example, a rock band?s site, kids? websites with games, photo galleries and movie clips are all uses for which FLASH is particularly well suited. Does FLASH have a place on the internet? Absolutely, it does, but as a website purchaser, though, you have to ask yourself the question ?Does FLASH have a place on my business website??

CAN EVERYONE SEE FLASH?
The short answer is ?No?. Although widely available and a component of most web browsers when they are installed, not everyone has FLASH installed with their web browser. If a visitor who does not have a FLASH plug-in on their PC visits a site that requires the FLASH plug-in, their web browser will prompt them to install it. PC and web savvy visitors will likely go ahead and do it, but some users (like my mother) panic if a pop-up window asks a question and they walk or surf away, thinking they just infected their PC with the latest doomsday virus. All of that said, a large percentage of people can see FLASH without too much anxiety.

Things to Consider:

THE INTRO FLASH SPLASH FLASH is commonly used for ?splash? pages or ?entry pages? into websites. We have all seen them, the animated movie or commercial that leads us into a more traditional marketing website. Have you ever wondered why the FLASH designer almost always places a ?skip intro? link on this page?

It?s because they know that if they don?t allow people to skip the FLASH splash screen they will lose the visitor. Remember that most internet surfers are impatient and are usually looking for information, not another commercial. ?Get people to your main web page and do it fast? should he the rule you follow.<

The trend to the use of ?splash? pages has declined in the past couple of years as the internet has matured. It is my (widely shared) belief that if your website is about good information, then an entry screen is just a roadblock to your visitors.

THE SEARCH ENGINE Search engines send out automated robots called ?spiders? that crawl through the internet and create massive databases of web pages. People then search for web pages based on keywords embedded into the web page (in hidden tags as well as in visible text on the page itself). If it is important to you that people find your website, then it is important to create well-written text and links on your web pages that search engines can find, read and follow. Search engines cannot see text in a FLASH page, nor can they cannot see hyperlinks on FLASH pages and therefore cannot follow them. Because a search engine will see your entire website as just one page, with no links on it, your website will not seem very important. That said, there are, arguably, ways to get a FLASH site indexed and catalogued by a search engine, but it is not the easiest thing to do and will likely require the services of a Search Engine Optimisation specialist.

RECIPROCAL LINKING
If you are kind enough to put links on your website for other websites, then you are providing them with a ?vote of confidence? in terms of search engine rankings. The more websites that link to a website, the more ?important? a search engine assumes the linked website to be. Taking that a step further, the more ?important? the website that links to your site, the higher the potential ranking your site will get. Likewise, sites that provide you with a reciprocal link are, in effect, giving you their ?vote of confidence?, and in turn making your website more ?important?.
Remember what I said earlier? Search engines cannot see hyper-links when they are embedded into FLASH. So, although the links are appreciated, they will not contribute to search engines? perceptions of how valuable your website may be to the world - as a result, a those ?votes of confidence? go to waste.

Make sure that people who provide you with a link from their website to yours do not embed it into a FLASH page. Links should be in pure HTML, or Hyper-Text MarkUp Language. If you provide links to other websites on your site, the same applies to you. Use HTML.

?DON?T BREAK MY BACK BUTTON!?
Web browsers all have a ?back? button, and software users - more specifically, web surfers - use the ?Back? button as a matter of course. It is accepted good practice for web developers to not ?break the back button? - render the ?Back? button useless. Unfortunately, because of the nature of FLASH, the back but ton doesn?t work in a FLASH website.

CREATE A BOOKMARK IF YOU CAN
People like to book pages on the internet, so that they can return to them quickly later. Web surfers do not always book mark the index page, or main page, of a website. For example, if your site has a nifty currency converter or a great mortgage calculator on it, people may simply want to bookmark just that page. You cannot bookmark an internal page of a FLASH site, you can only bookmark the main page. Try it. Visit a 100% FLASH website, surf around a bit, then try to bookmark a page you are looking at: it doesn?t work, because you haven?t changed pages from when you first arrived at the site - you have simply ?played the animation?, which made it appear as though you went to different pages.

COST
The cost of developing a traditional marketing website, using standard design graphics, HTML and text, is, in most cases, less expensive than using FLASH. If your designer proposes using FLASH, ask the question ?How much would it cost to do the same thing without FLASH??

MAKING REVISIONS AND UPDATES
If you have your website built 100% in FLASH, you have subscribed to a certain skill-set in your designer. If you want to make revisions, you will always need to use someone who can work with FLASH. The same theory applies if your website is images, HTML and text. The distinct difference is that there are far more webmasters who work with the latter than in FLASH. Revisions to FLASH sites typically take longer, and as a result your cost of maintenance can be quite steep.

THE SOURCE FILES
FLASH source files are the heart of a FLASH movie, element or website. The final source file will he named something like mywebsite.FLA, the native uncompiled source file for a FLASH file. Once the designer is ready to deploy the FLASH to the web server the file is compiled into a different format. The compiled file in our example would be called mywebsite.SWF. So, to clarify, the original artwork and design is worked on in the .FLA format, and the final file that goes on the web server is .SWF.

I see time and time again that designers do not provide clients with the source file for their FLASH elements or website.
They protect the .FLA files, and guess what, you have to go to them for updates and revisions. It does not matter how talented your new web master or designer is, if you do not have the source file with the .FLA extension for your FLASH site you will not be able to update it. Ask your designer to provide you with this source file if you decide to use FLASH elements on your website.

A FINAL NOTE ON FLASH
Please do not interpret my remarks here as being ?anti-FLASH?. The fact is that it really is a great media technology. If you have the budget and want to develop your website using 100% pure FLASH, there are some things you can do to mitigate some of the pitfalls I have described here.

Use a JavaScript to detect the browser capabilities of your visitor and ensure that they have FLASH plug-in to support the FLASH on your site. If the result of this simple test is ?No, they do not sup port FLASH?, then the right thing to do is direct them to an alternative HTML-based website with your content. So, although you can overcome the problem of missing FLASH plug-ins, you have to have two websites (a FLASH one and an HTML one).

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