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DHTML or Flash?
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By Riaan Pieterse
[Hits: 19603]
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The last five years has seen an exponential growth in the useof shockwave and flash animations in creating websites. The oldtried and trusted techniques such as D/HTML are slowy movingover to make room for this newer multimedia delivery vehicle.Scripting, such as Javascript, is viewed with disdain by someand ignored by others. Yet the people who advocate the use offlash/shockwave in creating multimedia-rich sites are not askingthe right question: Is all that glitters gold?
An important facet of flash / shockwave glossed over by mostpeople is that these technologies are a packaged scriptingenvironment: In other words - most of what you can do in flash,you can do in DHTMl with a liitle effort. A question that popsup at this stage is: Why would I want to go through all of that?The answer is simple and is illustrated by way of practicalexample.
Pick a topic - any topic - and type the relevant seach keywordsinto your favorite search engine. Now try to find a flash siteunder the first thirty results. You will be surprised to findthat this 'silver bullet' of web design does not even feature.The majority of search engines do not support the indexing ofshockwave / flash sites - this can have a detrimental effect onyour Internet business if you rely on search engine traffic togenerate revenue. Remember one thing: Content is king and theonly recognised content is in HTML pages.
Bells & Whistles: Where, When and What
Deploying rich multimedia sites are becoming more and more adesign requirement. However, the objective of your site shouldbe the determining factor between using D/HTML or Flash formultimedia content. Exposure and the generation of revenuesolidly discounts the use of Flash as the major site component -search placement is too important to sacrifice for a simplething such shiny buttons. D/HTML provides an attractivealternative to ensuring that your site is indexed properly bysearch engines.
However, Flash should not be put out to pasture based on this:Limited Flash content can still be an asset on your Internetpresence if used judisciously. Corporate Intranets are anothermatter entirely: Flash provides the perfect delivery vehicle forrich business applications, where DHTML would be more of aliability than an asset - e.g. training material, presentationsand etcetera.
In conclusion, the objective of a site should determine which ofthe two technologies are the preferred medium for mutimediadelivery.
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