There’s nothing worse than landing on a web page and being forced to wait for an eternity while some small animated icon indicates an extremely large flash file is loading.

Animations on a web page ARE distracting, so make sure they distract for good reasons. Don’t, for example, put an animated advertisement for another web site on your front page. Nothing guarantees a faster exit from your site!

Don’t use flash just for the sake of using it. Ensure it contributes something to your message, and where possible, keep it off your home page altogether (unless it forms part of your banner).

Use flash to create image galleries, to give instructions, or to illustrate how something works. If you want to attract people to a specific part of your site, you could create a small flash element that links to the relevant page. But whatever use you find for flash, keep the files small so they load quickly.

One good use for flash is the creation of web site navigation. Flash allows you to make some very nice navigation elements that can add some life to your pages. Flash is also good for streaming audio and video into your pages - all the tools are built into WEBPLUS to enable you to do this. You should also remember that audio and video files can be much smaller when converted to flash (swf) files.

Use flash, by all means, but give some thought on how it will be perceived by your site visitors. Time is a precious commodity, and people are not always prepared to give you the opportunity to waste their time with frivolous or pointless animations.

The example above shows subtle use of Flash to draw attention to a brochure that may be offered on a web site.