Re: FLASH: flash or html????????

[Marc Hoffman (Dart Frog Media)]

At 05:44 AM 10/5/99 , you wrote:

>Hi everybody,

>     just a quick question about which is best???????

>I am producing a complex drop down menu for a large intranet this is not a 

>problem however is it better to added a shockwave file to an html document 

>where the image is placed with others in its own table cell......or is it 

>better to produce a full screen flash file with all the other graphics 

>that would be statically added to the HTML added to the flash file and the 

>whole thing shown as one large flash movie????????

>I hope you understand this question as it might help with the answering

>thanks in advance

>Stuart



Hi Stuart,


It may be a quick question but there's no quick answer :-).


If the other graphics are vector you will probably get easier layout 

control and a faster-loading, better-looking page putting it all in Flash.


If using lots of bitmaps within Flash, you won't want to scale the Flash 

greater than the size that shows the bitmaps at 100% (that is, one image 

pixel per monitor pixel). So in a hybrid page (mixture of Flash and other 

images) you could keep your bitmaps (gifs, jpegs) at 100% and scale the 

Flash depending on remaining available space; not so in an all-Flash piece.


If the images will be swapped out a lot, it might be easier to do that if 

they're not embedded in the Flash. Depends on whether the Flash author is 

around to help. In Flash4 you can set it up to create each image as a .swf 

and load it into a movie clip in the Flash movie. That would not be hard to 

teach to a web maintenance person with limited Flash knowledge.


If this is an opening navigation screen, you need to think about getting it 

all loaded as quickly as possible. Flash is a streaming medium, so it can 

start playing before it's fully loaded, but that doesn't help in situations 

such as opening navigation screens where all content must be visible for it 

to look and work correctly. Since you're on an intranet this probably won't 

be an issue, but I mention so that this reply has some broader applicability.


Placing Flash in a table cell is slightly more difficult than placing it on 

an HTML page or frame.


I'm sure others on the list can add factors for consideration; these are 

just the ones that first come to my mind.



Marc Hoffman

marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com (mailto:marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com)

.

My Flash Portfolio: <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)


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