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i wrote about web design with Flash and said “none of the big guys develops whole web site in flash”.

well, i was deadly wrong.

i just went to Prada web site and was wondering where to go next. i was staring at a black belt with white text “PRADA” on it, below it there is a picture of a very cool lady (looks like 3D computer generated, is it?) holding prada handbag. no other text, nothing to click, nowhere to go.

hey, it’s PRADA, it’s not a under construction site that the boy next door just put up.

then i noticed there’s popup window blocked warning message on top of the browser window. well, yes i use a few popup blocker including firefox extension, google toolbar, yahoo toolbar. after disabling all popup blocking, reloaded prada.com, phew, i see a popup window which leads to pradaparfums.com.

i have to say honestly, it’s fantastic Flash web site, whole site in Flash.

now go to google and search for “prada handbag”, prada itself is not in top 10, not on 2nd page either, not even on 3rd page.

how about “prada shoes” in google? same.

yahoo? go try it.

it’s ranked at no. 1 for “prada” though, i guess many web sites link to them using “prada” as linking text. i link to them in this post as well.

now take a look at how many pages from prada.com have been indexed by google, then click on the 2nd page listed “Prada Women Fragrance” (you’ve visited homepage right?), a black screen to me. 3nd listing “Prada Perfume Fragrance“? same, a blank page in black color with nothing on it!

if you view source of the page, there’re codes. but the text are hidden by CSS.

this is interesting. imagine you produce and sell Adapr handbag and shoes, can you afford designing your web site this way?!

Flash has become a “must-have” for many web design companies and corporate as well as personal web sites.

used properly, it can be cool, eye-catching, and useful to visitors. otherwise, it’s often counterproductive.

my take on this is, it can be used very well as part of your web site, for example, a flash banner, a multimedia flash presentation of your products/services, a hi-tech flavor introduction of your company, etc.

a trend i see in the past few months, flash is used as video and audio clip player. video is getting hot nowadays, it gives very personal touch, present your products in a more straightforward way, it can be like a TV commercial, very powerful selling tool. the benifit of using flash to play video or audio on web site is, visitors do not need special plugin, publishers do not have to worry about different video formats.

however, you have to think twice before making your whole web site in flash. many web sites are in fact just flash movies, which i would not recommend.

if you think about it, none of the big guys develops whole web site in flash. there must be a reason. the simplest i can think of, the web site is meant to provide useful information to visitors, not only a cool presentation. how much information can you squeeze into one flash? thousands of pages of valuable product information, guides, tips, articles… no way.

secondly, flash is not indexable by search engines. they’re trying to, but not getting there yet. there’s workaround to feed text version to search engines while displaying flash version to human visitors. although it’s totally ethical, however it’s still cloaking that search engines may not like. search engines use algorithm to rank web pages, not human editors, algorithm, til today, cannot identify the cloaking is ethical or just dirty tricks.

thirdly, flash movie often takes much longer to download, especially if whole web site is built in flash, as it will be a big file. again, there’re workarounds to make flash start playing while still being downloaded. then you need very experienced flash designer.

one last point before i finish this post, many people including myself would click on “back” button whenever they see a flash is downloading as full page, be it intro or whole web site. fair or not, you have to accept it. it’s a habit developed from the old dial-up days.

in order to make your web site load faster, besides image compression, using html authoring software, you can also optimize your html files. these are rather boring technical stuff, but will absolutely benefit your web sites.

* use CSS - CSS reduces the amount of markup in html, and you can put it as external file so that it won’t be loaded everytime.
* use valid markup - valid markups stop browsers from having to perform “error correction” when parsing the html.
* specify image and table sizes (height and width) - so that browser can display web pages before image or table is downloaded (as it can immediately determine the height and width of your images and tables).
* remove unnecessary stuff - leading whitespace, extra blank lines, comments…
* cut down on bells and whistles - cool javascript menu, buttons, graphics, music, animated gif, flash, etc. do they serve specific purpose there? or just for fun?
* split page into multiple pages if it’s too long - you have more pages at the same time.
* minimize the number of files referenced - so that the number of HTTP connections required to download a page is lowered.
* replace table-based layout with divs - if your good at CSS.
* avoid nested tables - if you have to use it.
* use external files - CSS, javascripts, etc.

goal: optimized file size - the total size of all the files of your web page (graphic, script, html, etc.) should be small enough to download quickly. get it below 30kb if possible. 20kb is better. smaller than 10kb is best.

i know many web designers will laugh at this figure. 30kb or 20kb for a modern web page? no way! my cool logo alone takes 20kb…

well, what’s the point if visitors do not want to wait for your cool logo?

pages that take forever to download is no. 1 of my top 10 web design mistakes.