Interface Usability
by Merien Q. Kunst

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Flash is a Tool, Not a Platform

Flash sites are either sites with Flash elements or 100% Flash sites. The latter is a very decent option for small sites, like personal sites, or sites that are meant purely for entertainment by animation and sound. But you may want to develop a more elaborate site with features like a forum, chat room, response forms, user registration, content management or a search option. While doing this strictly in Flash is certainly a great technical challenge, it’s not a very wise decision. The fact is that Flash is just a tool that offers a means for designers to turn their ideas into reality. It is not a platform on which to build a Website.

The best sites out there combine Flash with other techniques and formats like DHTML, streaming video, MP3, Java, the common image formats like JPG and GIF, as well as any other medium that will offer the needed content in the most appropriate way to the visitor. The magic rule is to consider every possible medium for each element you want to develop. If you understand the strengths and weaknesses of Flash, you can apply it where it is suitable, or decide when it may not be the best solution.

The single most common error should be mentioned first. When a text button is created, it is essential that the hit area frame of the button be filled with a solid shape in roughly the same size as the button text field. The effect of an empty hit area frame is a very jerky reaction of the mouse pointer. Often, such buttons require surgical precision to simply use the button. The best thing to do when creating any button is to choose a filled shape that covers the maximum dimensions of your button and put it in the hit area frame of the button.

On many occasions designers choose to use a Flash movie to display textual content in their Website or presentation. Whenever large pieces of static text are involved, you should question whether Flash is the best medium to present this information to your audience. The downside of embedding large text areas in your Flash movies mostly an issue of legibility, but also concerns further processing of the information by the viewer. Often, users aren’t prepared to read through pages of small, anti-aliased text, and will usually choose to skip this information - which may be vital. One technique to solve this problem in Flash 5 is offered in the form of Dynamic Text fields.

Dynamic Text fields are presented as aliased, selectable text, which not only increases the legibility of small fonts, it also provides a more useful way to present the text. That’s because this technique enables users to select an area of text and copy it to the clipboard. This is more user friendly, since it provides better access to the information. Many visitors will want a way to extract specific pieces of information. This technique allows them to store this information wherever they want, exactly like copying text from HTML pages.

For large amounts of text, Flash is usually not the best medium, and other media like HTML, plain text, Adobe Acrobat, or word processor documents should be considered. Think twice before you start pasting long passages of text into your Flash movie.