Flash the new publishing tool

According to Jacob Neilsen Flash is 99% bad for website designing as it breaks the Web’s fundamental interaction style and it lowers user usability. Flash are fancy animation on the opening page which provides introduction for the website.

However, things have change as people are starting to love it. Anders responds: “Developers love it, though. It was always very effective for advertising, and over time people used it for new and unique experiences.” (Auhur, 2007)

Flash are everywhere now. Youtube and Flicker uses flash to enhance their graphics and videos. Websites uses flash to attract interaction between users and the website. For example Mickey Mouse official website uses flash to attract kids to connect with the cartoons characters. Newspapers websites on the other hand use Flash to illustrate complex timeliness and subjects.

Kress and Leeuwen relate the representational and interactive meanings of the image to each other through three interrelated systems which is informative value, salience and framing. These three values do not apply only to single pictures but to complex visuals or visuals which combine text and graphic elements.The integration of different semiotic modes is based on overarching code, which provides rule and meaning to multimodal text with logic of its integration.Some multimodal texts also utilize both for example, film which rhythm will usually be the dominant integrative code.(Kress & Leeuwen, 2006).

The advantages of flash is that developers can create a file without relying on the browser its viewed in. As the software designer Jacek Artymiak puts it, Flash "is, in a way, the PDF of interactive multimedia. Both formats are so popular because, for the end user, the efforts that go into achieving the desired results are minimal." According to Anders, “Flash is the new publishing too of the century as more people are publishing it in blogs, Myspace or Youtube”. (Auhur,2007)

Reference:

Auhur, C. 2007, Flash is the new publishing tool of the century [Online, accessed 5 June.2007] URL:http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2049933,00.html

Nielsen, J. 2000, Flash 99% bad [Online, accessed 5 June.2007] URL: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html

Kress, G. & Leeuwen, T.V. 2006, ‘Chapter six: The meaning of composition’, Reading images: The Grammar of Visual Design, (2nd ed.), Routledge, London.