Flash Web Site Design - article by Good English Article Sites

Flash – More than just a Design tool

When designing a web site using the average Dreamweaver design tool, it is usually easy to do a layout of the design, add the necessary elements provided on the tools palette and import the necessary pictures and graphics to complete a web page. In fact, if you know your way around the Dreamweaver design tool, you can have a complete web page up and running in a few hours. Flash web site design is however a little different. In order to have a fully-functional web site that has the same capabilities as Dreamweaver, more than the basic design skills are needed. This is because flash has another platform which can be used to design highly interactive websites. This is the scripting language ActionScript.

It has to be remembered however that flash web site design should not take the same approach as design in, say Dreamweaver. This is because flash applications can quickly get large when using elements like pictures and audio features. On top of that, such things as a preloader can take up a lot of bandwidth which can significantly reduce the loading speed on a flash web site. In order to reduce the size of flash websites, a developer may decide to manage elements by having them load up dynamically from a server. In order to do this, a good knowledge of Actionscript will therefore be necessary. If a flash web site design will involve some movie streaming, then it may be necessary to monitor the loading of the flash movies. There are several ways to do this. One is to have a loader frame and determine what to do next when a user, say clicks a button. ActionScript allows a developer to set the frames to determine when a user can continue to use the site while certain elements are loading.

A flash web site design can also incorporate some interactivity by allowing users to type in input text fields. This information can then be manipulated using ActionScript. In fact, Flash is considered a good alternative to plain text forms since it is smooth and scalable allowing a developer to use any font by embedding it in the flash movie. Data in flash movies can also be easily manipulated. From the above, it is clear that in the right hands, flash can be used to not only come up with an amazing flash web site design, but also one that offers a lot of interactivity.

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