Flash in a Nutshell
Do you ever hear people talking about Flash on the web and wonder what the heck it is? Wonder no more. Flash is a sort of animated image. In the olden days of the web it was used just to make moving pictures. Now it’s also used for things like contact forms and in menu systems.
Here are some examples of Flash used in websites:
- Meadows RV Park – Do you see the rotating image at the top of the page? That’s Flash. What about the silhouette of the bucking horse? That’s an animated gif. As with many things in website design, there’s more than one way to accomplish a goal. Animated gifs are better for small images like the bucking horse.
- Follow Your Heart Fine Jewelry – The image slide show on this page is done with Flash. It’s also the technology behind the cool magnifying glass functionality on this page.
- I’m a huge fan of the Jacquie Lawson animated eGreetings. The cards are powered by . . . you guessed it! Flash.
If you’re not seeing any of these Flash items it would be a good bet that you don’t have a Flash player installed on your computer. Adobe, the same company that brings you PDFs, owns the software that makes and plays Flash. The player is free and can be downloaded from the Adobe website.
Have you ever been at a website and it says that you don’t have the most current version of Flash? I don’t know about you, but that makes me wonder what version of Flash I do have. You can find out what version of Flash is installed on your computer by going to Flash Version Test page on the Adobe website.
For now I’m using version 9 and I think I’ll stay there for awhile. WordPress is reporting that there’s an incompatibility between the “add media” functions of WordPress and Flash 10. (See item three on this page.)
That’s Flash in a nutshell.
Share this:
December 8th, 2008 at 9:32 am
I am so glad that I can keep breaking things so you have extra topics to talk about