Determining When Not to Use (Sex offenders web site) Flash 8 If
Determining When Not to Use Flash 8 If Flash 8 is so wonderful, why doesn t every Web site designer use it? Why aren t most Web sites created completely with Flash? Here s the other side of the story. Although the vector graphics and animation of Flash load quickly, they don t load as quickly as plain text and simple graphics. Adding a movie to your Web page creates some overhead. There s no point in using Flash if you want simple pages consisting of mostly text and a few graphics that you want to stay put and not move. You can create certain graphic effects more easily by using bitmap graphics. Painted brushstroke and textured effects are examples. Artists create these types of graphics by using graphics editing software, and the results are bitmaps. Similarly, to add photographs to your Web page, you need to scan the photographs as bitmaps. Flash creates vector graphics (defined mathematically), which are different from bitmap graphics (defined by lots of dots). You can find out more about bitmap and vector graphics in Chapter 2. If you want simple animation, such as a few blinking dots or a marquee effect, animated GIFs (the animated bitmap graphics that you often see on the Web) might be smaller than Flash movies, so they load faster. You can create animated GIFs by using animated GIF editing software. Some sites don t lend themselves to animation. Animation can distract from your content, and overdoing animation can make a serious site seem silly. Animation is great, but it has its place. Also, although Flash has some features that allow accessibility for people with disabilities, it still isn t as accessible as plain HTML. You need to determine whether animation is right for your Web site. Flash provides little in the way of 3-D graphics or animation. For those, you need to go to more sophisticated software, such as Poser or 3D Studio Max. (See Chapter 14 for more 3-D possibilities in Flash.) Getting the Right Start Well begun is half done, as the saying goes. The easiest way to begin using Flash 8 is with a shortcut or alias right on your desktop. Double-click the Flash icon, and you re on your way. (See Appendix A for information on installing Flash.) 12 Part I: A Blast of Flash
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