Flash
A great number of websites
take advantage of the Flash technology, that allows websites to incorporate
animations, sound, video, interactive behaviour, games and even Internet
applications.
The use of this technology allows a greater amount of control over the lay-out of a website.
Thanks to Flash, complex animations can be build, resembling cartoons or video clips. Those animations can include photos, illustrations, music or video.
The Flash technology allows us to load certain elements of an animation only when they are called upon in order to diminish the waiting time for the visitor.
The programming language that is part of Flash allows us to create elaborate animations and far-reaching interactivity. Every object can receive a random or intelligent behaviour. We can build a small game, a quiz, a guestbook, an address book, an anniversary calendar, an E-card system, etc.
A Flash website can load its contents from external text files. This
allows us to separate the design from the contents.
This has many benefits. To keep the site up to date, one just has to
change the text files. One can also use the same animation for a multi-language
site.
Finally, this also allows the use of a database to deal with the contents.
The client can keep his own site up to date by interacting with simple
Internet forms.
A Flash website can also load pictures and sounds from external files, which facilitates keeping those also up to date.
A website can be entirely build by using the Flash technology or it can be a hybrid site, where certain parts (menu, animations) take advantage of the benefits of the flash technology and where other parts (articles) are build with more classical technologies.
A Flash website can easily be converted into a CD-ROM. This lets you distribute the same interactive content in different ways.