ASP.NET Blogging Software

Of all of the different kinds of programs on the market today, many people feel that Microsoft's recently released ASP.NET blogging software is the most advanced. In many ways, this particular program is more adaptable and more versatile than any other blogging software on the market. Although most of the people who favor the program are accomplished coders who are familiar with programming languages like html and C++, this new program from Microsoft is much easier to use than a lot of other blog design software that incorporates hands-on coding. One of the things that makes ASP.NET stand apart from its competitors is the fact that it allows designers to use a wide variety of programming languages when they build a blog. This means that a larger number of coders can realize their dreams by programming in the language with which they are most familiar and in which they are most accomplished. 

 

A lot of people have welcomed ASP.NET blogging software with enthusiasm and with open arms.

 

However, that doesn't mean that the ASP.NET program is right for everybody. If you are not familiar with computer languages like javascript or perl, you may find that the release of ASP.NET does not directly affect you at all. However, if you are an experienced web designer, you are likely to find much to celebrate in this exciting new program. 

 

How Blogging Brings Fame: Becoming Famous and Successful Through Your Blogs

If you have a knack for writing and if people love what you write about but you can't find a publisher that wants to publish what you write, you have to try out the internet. You have to consider the fact that writing can make you famous. If you think that you are good enough, then you should try writing blogs. Ever since blogging craze began, there were a lot of people who began opening up their own blog sites and a few of them have become famous. So, how does blogging bring fame?

 

First of all, because you will be posting what you write on blogging websites, it can be easily accessed by a lot of people. This is the internet. With millions of people logging in each day, there is a great chance that someone will come across your blogs.

 

If you are seeking fame and be known as a great writer, then positing what you write on blogging websites is the cheapest way to do so. It is also one

of the easiest ways to become famous in the internet.

 

To start writing blogs, you first need to create a blogging website. Today, there are quite a lot of websites that hosts blogging for free. Sign up with one of these websites and begin posting your blogs.

 

Basically, blogs are known to be journals. Think of it as writing your day-to-day activities and experiences and letting people know about it. However, you can

absolutely write about anything in blogs. It can be facts or you can also write fictional short stories. Or, you can do a mix of both.

 

The great thing about blogging is that you absolutely have complete freedom on whatever you want to write about. However, you have to take care in avoiding offending someone. Racial discrimination and other hate messages is prohibited as well as pornographic content.

 

Now that you posted your very first blog, the next thing to do is sit back and wait for readers to come across your blog and begin reading it. You don’t actually need to advertise as the people who read it will be the ones that will advertise for you. If you are good enough, then they will leave a comment on what they think about your blogs and they will also recommend it to their family and friends as a good read.

 

The secret in becoming successful and famous in blogs is the content of what you write. It should be interesting and easy to read. Try catching people's attention on the very first sentence. Once you catch their attention, they will become interested enough to read the entire blog.

 

This is the secret to becoming famous in blogging and gain a lot of loyal readers.

 

Try to update your blogging website on a daily basis.

 

If you really don’t have something to write about and you have a normal, routine life, try adding a little spice to it. You don’t actually need to lie but you can always bend the truth behind your so-called escapades. Exaggerate a little and also add a little humor.

 

You have to remember that readers don’t really want to know about your day-to-day activities. They want excitement. You don’t actually need to tell the readers details about your daily life, but what you need to do is get them to use their imagination.

 

These are some of the tips that you might want to remember when writing blogs. With these tips, you can be sure that your blogging website will bring you fame.

 

Blogging: Free Internet Marketing Method

 

It has been a long time since blogging has been practiced. But it is just recently that it has been considered as among the most addicting fads. Many adolescents have resorted to blogging as an outlet for their emotions, some online nook where they can blurt whatever just bugs them or whatever makes them feel elated. Savvy marketers have discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that won't cost you a cent. 

 

What exactly is blogging? Blog is the widely used term that refers to web log. Simply, a blog is an online journal. A blog could be set up to no cost at all, and can be used for just for the fun of it or for business reasons. Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire way to boost the visibility of your products and services. Here are a few ways to boost your internet advertising with the help of a blog:

 

Make your customers or clients abreast on your site alterations. Your new products and affiliate websites could also be announced through your blog.

 

Keep track of your endeavor objectives and plans through open writing. Your blog content can be easily stored through archives. What could be better than searchable data that could be easily accessed by anybody browsing the internet, right? Air your opinions, advice or reviews on specific services or products that are related to your business. Publishing is a very easy process with blogging. 

 

Include links that will bring in back links and afterwards improve your ranking on search engines. This could be better executed through putting well-written articles in your website. Associate links could also be included in your blog to earn more extra income.

 

Collect response through the ability of blogs to fetch comments from your blog readers. You are able to learn and improve your products and services through with the feedback from your readers. Connect well with other bloggers. When other bloggers notice that you have something great in your blog, they'll put you in their favorite lists that will automatically link you to their blogs. 

 

So, how do you arrange a blog? Here are some of the options you will be able to make use of to capitalize on this fun way to advertise your Internet business. Either you load blogging software or let a blogging hosting service do it for you. Host services such as Live Journal and Blogger.com are the most popular in this field. Those hosts will provide you with easy instructions on how to put up your blog. 

6 Red Hot Tips to Get Your Articles Read

There are several individuals who dread having to write papers or articles. Several just feel like it seems to be too much work and it all just attends to waste when no one reads the article. To a few individuals, reading articles seems like work to, especially if the article is boring and very bland. Well, articles are supposed to be read, that's their purpose. If it is not read then it's a waste of time and effort.

 

But even so, articles must be written to be read. It is just a matter of making them great. Making a great article does not have to be straining and strenuous. There are just some points needed to be reminded of, and some guides to follow. Once you get the hang of it, writing articles could be fun, as well as profitable for you and your site. 

 

Naturally, writing articles must be about something you know about, that's why if you own a site, you probably are knowledgeable about that particular topic and theme. 

 

When you write about it, you will not have a hard time because you already know what it is and what it is about. It is just a matter of making your articles creative and interesting. To make sure that your articles get read and enjoyed, here are six red hot tips to get your articles read. These tips will make your articles readable and interesting.

 

1) Use short paragraphs. When the paragraphs are very long, the words get jumbled in the mind of the reader just looking at it can get quite confusing and too much of a hard work to read. The reader will just quickly disregard the paragraph and move on to much easier reading articles that are great to look at as well as read. Paragraphs can be a single sentence, sometimes even a single word!

2) Take advantage of numbers or bullets. As each point is stressed out, numbers and bullets can quickly make the point easy to remember and tolerate. As each point, tip, guide or method is started with a bullet or point, readers will know that these are where the tips start. Format your bullets and numbers with indentations so that your4 article won’t look like a single block of square paragraphs. Add a little bit of flair and pizzazz to your articles shape. 

3) Use Sub-headings to sub-divide your paragraphs in the page. Doing this will break each point into sections but still would be incorporated into one whole article. It would also be easy for the reader to move on from one point to another; the transition would be smooth and easy. You will never lose your readers attention as well as the point and direction to where the article is pointing. 

4) Provide a great attention-grabbing title or header. If your title can entice an individual’s curiosity you are already halfway in getting an individual to read your article. Use statements and questions that utilize keywords that individuals are seeking. Provide titles or headers that describe your articles content but should also be short and concise. 

5) Keep them interested from the start to the finish. From your opening paragraph, use real life situations that can be adopted by the reader. Use great descriptions and metaphors to drive in your point, just do not overdo it. Driving your examples with graphic metaphors and similes would make it easy for them to imagine what you're talking about. Making the experience pleasurable and enjoyable for them.

6) Utilize figures when necessary and not just ordinary and insipid statements. Using specific facts and figures can heighten your article because it makes it authoritative. But don't make it too conventional, it should be light and easy in them and flow. Like a friendly teach her having a little chat with an eager student.

2 Things You Must Do and Not Do Before You Submit to Article Directories

To all authors and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills back. With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is why article writing, submissions and publications are also getting popular. There are already many tools that individuals can use to make the process of distributing their articles easier. Though this is priceless in getting the contents more exposure, which is only half of the story. Let us have a look first at the basic mistakes that some individuals make before submitting their contents to article directories:

Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.

 

In article writing, there are three key benefits why you're promoting them; branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts. But there's only one reason why you write an article, and that's to inform your audience. If the article isn't focused on this primary and most crucial purpose, it will fail to achieve the two promotion benefits because no one will be interested in reading them. You need to figure out first how to get people to read what is in your article, and then make them click on your resource box. You can achieve this by producing better contents. 

 

Failing to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing. 

 

You may know already that your articles can help you generate additional links back to your site. But do you know that you are able to get more visitors and better search engine results from those same articles? Mention keywords at strategic places. Just make certain not to overdo them. Some are even using anchor texts which are also an effective method. But it's important to know that majority of the directories are not able to support this. Remember that is not only about the links back to your site. Part of doing well in your article marketing is getting picked up by publishers with a large number of audiences and gaining the ability of leveraging other brands because of the quality of your work. Better search engine results also are great benefits. But these things don't put much money in your pocket. There are other factors that can turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity that can boost your earnings. Not just increase the number of visitors to your site. Start out with a plan and see to it that your article will serve the function that you intended it to have. 

The Key to Better Websites: Design

Introduction

  

Design, design, design. To put the wonders of a good design into perspective, imagine a when we are purchasing a T-Shirt. First of all, what do we look at? The design of the T-Shirt, of course. Well, most people do, other than the material factor. But let’s assume the all the other factors are constant, wouldn’t the design or looks, become the key aspect then?

 

Design

 

Putting oneself in another individual’s shoes, as usual. Here are another two situations.

 

Situation A: 

A website with good design and breathtaking graphics. (Good color schemes with matching theme), pictures. (Optimum resolutions and relevant) and proper fonts and word sizes.

 

Situation B: 

A website inversely equipped with hideous graphics and pictures in terms of resolution, quality and relevancy. (Red pictures with a bright green background) Fonts used were not matching albeit too fanciful. (Too small, artsy font-types)

 

Situation A, visitors that enter the website are immediately awestruck by the design and artwork. The well-placed pictures and designs will somewhat symbolize the positive nature of the company/website. As we know, most people DO judge by impression. 

 

As for Situation B, the shabby environment due to severe lack of creativity and badly taken pictures wouldn’t exactly help in attracting visitors. Fonts that were hard to be read, let alone comprehended, and mismatching themes in terms of color, isn’t exactly welcoming, is it?

 

Analysis: Now, the main idea here is to always plan your websites, try to get other individuals for feedback and perspectives. Each mindset might differ, but at least you will get room for improvement. Don’t get me wrong, even a plain website with proper design would generate plenty of positive implications, but the key idea here is to at least maintain an impressionable website.

 

Website Customization: What can we do?

Nowadays, in this trendy world, people get very uptight when they do not look entirely presentable. This would also be the case in web designing. 

 

Every individual would definitely want their website to look good, if not, to the best they can. Here are a few things we could look out for when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.

 

Color Schemes and Themes

 

When designing, always choose matching colors. An example of a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as purple and yellow. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look more professional.

 

Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization / etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme, such as machinery. 

 

Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing.

 

Finally, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the pictures must not be too large in terms of size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s needs. 

 

So, planning is something we should always do, before attempting something.

 

The Key to Better Websites: Navigation

Introduction

 

One of the primary implications of a well-organized / good website, is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and its content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most individuals undoubtedly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

 

Navigation

 

As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think. 

 

Situation A: 

Website with good navigation (2-3 hyperlinks to target page), well planned in terms of placement, and design.

 

Situation B: 

Website with poor navigation (takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

 

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

 

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example: home > about > products > product image > etc.… [a few more clicks] > product information).

 

Analysis: In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to Situation A be more rewarding and better?

 

Should I Create a Website? Do I Need One?

People always want to follow the latest thing, be it in fashion, sports, that kind of thing. Websites have become a necessity to almost everyone. Companies, businesses, individuals, even young adults have created personal websites with their respective purposes, be it for profit, or for entertainment.

 

What one must consider, however, before creating a website, are the factors in which must be put to thought before doing so, such as the cost, maintenance, use, web host and so forth.

 

Firstly, associating with the cost, we must always try to find an affordable host, not spending too much, nor too little. A cheap host does not exactly symbolize a credible reliability rating, but we must always look for value for money deals. Also, regarding the efficiency and server/web host reliability, there are many cases of web hosts not providing the service they had assured other people, some had even shut down and were nowhere to be seen. Keep this note in mind, as if you would like a long-lasting website, this would be the first thing to look for.

 

Next, would hiring a professional be affordable? Is it the best option? For simple websites, we could always pick up the coding, or even use programs, as it is relatively simple. However, when it comes to more complex coding, and when you want it to do a tad more than just providing information, hiring help in doing so would be the best way. Not only in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality website. If the website also acts as a portal for businesses, security would definitely be the issue here.

 

So, having considered the things to do before building a website, do we actually NEED one? If creating one would boost sales or promote positive implications to oneself, then by all means, go ahead and do what’s best. Yet again, planning is the key to success, in everything we do.

 

Is It Easy to Create our own Website? What is HTML?

Creating a website is not so much a feat, if we compare it to the education of other technical skills. Most people tend to give up and pack their bags as soon as they hear the word “programming” and “technical”. They think it`s too much of a hassle to actually learn a whole computer “language”. HTML, the most basic computer language in building websites, is actually pretty simple to understand, as long as we have the interest in learning new things.

 

What is HTML?

 

HTML is the acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. For learning purposes, just think of it as a language that the computer understands. For example, as humans, we were taught different languages; i.e., HTML as a language, is mostly and specifically used to create a website. The web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, will then decipher and interpret the code or rather, language (HTML), and display it in a way we can understand it, just like in a basic webpage.

 

Coding

 

Coding the HTML language might be a bit tough for some people, so we can actually purchase programs, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, or even Microsoft Frontpage. These programs are solely created to help individuals in designing professional webpages/websites. 

 

Furthermore, one could also gain access to online web-builders, website builders that are inbuilt and can be directly controlled from the net. There are many different and specific builders online.

 

Books and magazines contain guides that can help in offering tutorials and ways to put up our own websites. Even online tutorials are credible, as in the modern world, information technology is the best and most cost-efficient way in retaining knowledge, especially in this particular field.

 

So, you could start and build one right away. If you enjoy coding, it might even become a favorable past-time.

 

Why You Should Use Graphic Templates

When it comes to graphics, most Internet marketers shy away from using graphic templates whether it is eBook covers, website layouts or promotional banners because they firmly believe that by using graphic templates, they are tarnishing their own business. They want to own a unique identity and hence will always find a professional graphic designer to do the job. Well, you're in for a big surprise!

 

When you purchase a graphic template, you will be able to customize it to an extent or even build a totally new design based on it! What's the point of using the template then, you say? Well, it serves as a source of inspiration and ideas for a totally new design. You can't derive anything from a blank canvas, right?

 

On top of that, you are actually saving a lot of precious time that you can otherwise spend on more important matters like developing new products or market your products. When you buy a pre-made template, you only need to edit a thing or two to give it an identity of your own, and that gives you more time and flexibility to work on other stuff. 

 

Okay, let's say you argue that hiring a designer to do the job is equally fast. That may be true but don't forget, hiring a professional designer to do a custom design for you will cost you a lot of money. Unless you need a totally unique identity that you are aiming to establish firmly in your niche market, you don't need to get a designer to design it for you.

 

Not all graphic templates are suitable, so you have to be careful when choosing one. Consider quality over the price, and you're on your way to creating a positive image for your business while saving more time for more productive chores!

Why Hire A Designer?

A lot of online business owners start with no money. They have to do everything themselves -- the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to their product's marketing needs. As their business expands over time, they will find that their simple "homemade" site might not be enough to cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion. 

 

Sounds familiar? Chances are, you're someone who started everything with no money too, so you're pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a designer than just finishing up a job that you don't want to do. 

 

When you hire a web designer to do your job for you, you are doing more than just handing over the "dirty job" to someone else. In fact, by paying a little money, you can let the designer worry about the little annoyances that always evade the main picture and only come haunting when you're halfway through the job. That way, you will be more focused and have more time to spend on your actual business strategy. 

 

On the other hand, the designers you hire are professionals so they are good at what they do. By outsourcing your web design jobs to them, you won't have to worry when problems surface because you can always get them to fix it for you. Again, they will be able to pin point the problem and fix it faster than you probably will be able to. 

 

Also, the work you pay for will turn out more professional than what you can achieve because the designers have been doing it longer than you have. After all, they do it for a living so they have to be good!

 

So, remember to not just work your business, but grow your business too!

 

Who Is Your Audience?

Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more. 

 

What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting. 

 

Take your audience's emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that. 

 

When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site's general theme. 

 

Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

 

When Is the Right Time to Redesign?

If you run a website, chances are you often wonder whether it is the right time to do a total redesign of the layout of your website. Here are some points to consider:

 

Are you thinking of a redesign just for the sake of it? If you answered yes to that question, it is not yet the right time to do a redesign. Remember, a design serves a specific purpose. If you are not sure whether to do an overhaul of your site, keep in mind that your current design might have a specific purpose that you might not know about. You will lose that function if you do a redesign. 

 

On the other hand, if your website has had the same website design since 1990, perhaps it is high time to do a redesign. The last thing you would ever want to happen to your site is when visitors leave your site without taking a look at your content just because the design is old fashioned. If this is your case, here are some points to ponder before doing a redesign. 

 

Redesigning your website is like performing plastic surgery on it. Your website loses its current identity (for the better or worse) and your regular visitors might not recognize your new design at first glance. You risk losing them just because they thought they landed on the wrong page. Hence, it is very important that you retain a characteristic feature from your old layout. Perhaps it is the logo of your site; perhaps it is the same text style for the title for your site. 

 

To play it safe, put a poll on your site to let your visitors do the talking. If they think it is necessary for the website to have a fresh look, give it to them!

 

Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site

As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design. 

 

When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design. 

 

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!

 

1) Background music

 

Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and every time a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitors’ burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed. 

 

2) Extra large/small text size

 

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!

 

3) Popup windows

 

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

 

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do effectively. Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!

 

Ways To Improve Sales Through Your Website

Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal more sales. However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors. 

 

The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual in your sales letter, not to your whole audience. 

 

The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too. 

 

Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website. 

 

Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain. 

 

Lastly, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forgot to ask for the sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g., "click the button to buy now!").

Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here's a simple breakdown. 

 

The good:

 

1.    Interactivity

 

Flash's Action script opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactive features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more. 

 

2.    A standardized site

 

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed. 

 

3.    Better expression through animation

 

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real "movie files" that are raster based and hence much larger in size. 

 

The bad and the ugly:

 

4.    The Flash player

 

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You'll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player installed. 

 

5.    Site optimization

 

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site. 

 

6.    Loading time

 

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors. 

 

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.