"Pros and Cons of Using Flash for Banners"

The article that I found is titled “Pros and Cons of Using flash for Banners”. This title is very appropriately named considering that it deals entirely with the positive and negatives of using the Flash program for banners when creating WebPages. The author, Artjom Sharafejev, begins the article by explaining the ever-growing trend of using flash banners in websites. These style banners are commonly used in Internet promotion. While these banners can be an effective tool for promoting a wise range of things, the author states a few drawbacks hat these banners can encounter.
The first negative that the author states is that leading browsers do not initially support Flash files, and that plug-ins are usually going to be required. This means that in order to see the animation, the user will have to download a plug-in to view the newer version of flash. He also states that statistically 75% of people use Microsoft Internet Explorer, and most of them are users with basic skills that may be less likely t download any of the required upgrades. In this instance, the snazzy flash animation is useless.
The next negative regarding the Flash animation banners is the delay that is set in between he frames. In a case where the user viewing the material is using an older, less-capable machine, it would be likely that while loading the page the banner itself would be loading as well. This means that the user will probably not be willing to wait to see the rest of the animation before continuing on his/ her way. Once again the flash animation would be considered useless since the user would not have gotten the desired message.
The author offers one more con in his opinion to using Flash banners on websites. He states that the right click option on these banners is non-existent, and it does not offer an option to view the animation in a new window or in the same window. He said that this is rather annoying due to the fact that sometimes 15 windows will already be opened and another window will increase CPU usage. After all of the cons that were listed by the author, he did offer a few of the advantages of using Flash for the banner animations. One of these advantages is that the file size of a banner created with Flash will remain the same no matter what size the banner is itself. This is because Flash uses vector images. His second advantage is the vast amount of colors that can be used in Flash, as opposed to the 256 that a .gif animation is limited to.
I believe that most of the quirks that this author has listed are easily fixed in today’s world. The integration of Flash into websites has been growing incredibly in the last years, and soon enough the small quirks that are left will be obsolete. As for the complaint that most browsers don’t support the new versions of Flash, I find this to be a minimal problem. I think that the plug-ins are exceptionally easy for any user to download and use. I believe that Flash will be a momentous part of web design, and despite its few weaknesses will someday be used on all web pages.


http://www.flashnewz.com/flashnewz-5-20060331ProsandConsofUsingFlashforBanners.html