WebWorks Intl' Frequently Asked Questions : Animations (Flash / Silverlight)

Animation and more in particular Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight can turn the web into a medium capable of expressing rich visual and audio messages, and highly interactive content, but it is important to know when to use it and when not.

When to Use Animations?

As an intro, to 'WOW' people, as long as there is a way to skip the intro. No-one wants to see the same thing over-and-over, especially when the intro is rather lengthy.
To draw attention to: a change of state, something new or important, process.
To increase branding and image management in order to give the customer the sense of luxury, importance.
To create compelling, entertaining and interactive content.

When Not to Use Animations?

Just for the 'WOW' effect, to be flashy or to show-off.
Showing that you use the latest technology.
Building your whole Web Site in Flash might become a problem as search engines' Robots, Spiders, Crawlers, etc... can't interpret Flash and will therefore not index your Site.
If your pages contain a lot of text or need accessible viewing for people who use voice readers, have limited motor skills or when you need unicode (international characters) support.
Your content has to be searchable or readable on portable devices (cell phones, PDAs).
If you would like to allow bookmarking of individual pages or sections.
If you have a limited budget.
If you need dynamic content generation (database driven).
When the Developer you use is not proficient in Flash; there are a lot of things you need to know in order to be a good Flash Developer. Everyone can create a Flash animation in a few minutes and unfortunately they are a lot of books in circulation that would like you to believe this. The same is true for Web Developers.