Macromedia Flash

Macromedia Flash delivers animated and interactive content to the Web. Many Web site designers like and use Flash because it gives them exact control over every part of the design, and anything can be animated. There are a lot of Web sites which "dismissed" HTML and use only Flash .

There are also some problems when you use Flash to create a Web site . The main problem is the fact that most search engines don't index Flash . However, new improvements in the search engines allow them to read partially the content of a Flash image ( Google is the first one to brake the ice on this). Even if it is a long way until Flash objects will be indexed entirely (it those will be indexed), it is quite used in designing Web sites, mainly because of the fact that it allows the creation of the non-standard user interfaces and also because the design is superior to HTML (from some points of view). There are also problems when the connection speed is an issue, Flash objects, depending on the complexity of the design , have an increased size in comparison with simple HTML , so loading a Flash object could take a while mainly for Dial-up users. There is the fact that most browsers don't have Flash support integrated by default so sometimes visitors have to install a plug-in in order to play Flash. Finally Flash Web sites cannot take into account many usability features, such as respecting the browser's font size and allowing deep-linking, and they fail any accessibility tests for blind users using screen readers.

Due to these issues, many Web designers do not consider Flash to be a valid solution for corporate or retail Web sites. However the consensus tends to be that Flash is simply a tool, and like all tools it can be misused or applied for the wrong purpose.