• Home
• About Us
• Services  +
  • Web Sites
  • Web Systems
  • IT Consulting
  • Software Development
  • Data Processing
  • Cloud Applications
  • Video Production
  • Automatic Identification
  • Marketing Services
• Web Content  +
  • Administration
  • Blogs
  • eCommerce
  • eLearning
  • Multimedia and Flash
  • My Account
  • Opinion Polls
  • Photo Albums
  • Podcasts
• Support
• Client Center
• Contact Us
• Login

Multimedia

Multimedia is a term referring to a multiple of mediums... for media. Examples of mediums include text, static images, animations, movies, audio and interaction (as in buttons that do things or forms that collect data). Flash, and other multimedia platforms like Silverlight (Microsoft) and QuickTime (Apple), incorporate many facets of multimedia. Though multimedia goes well beyond Flash, we focus on Flash here as it is the most widely used multimedia tool in use today.

Flash

There are good cases to be made for using Flash but also significant (and increasing) drawbacks.

Pros:  Flash presentations can be really cool. They're like mini-movies and can engulf a viewer with stunning visuals, movie clips, animation, effects and of course, sound. Flash presentations can be interactive and offer a compelling way to capture information from visitors.

Cons:  Flash production is expensive and object can take a long time to load (even via high-speed connections). Flash requires a (free) browser plug-in to be installed and, if not updated regularly, expose another layer of security risk. While it is estimated that over 95% of browsers have the plug-in installed, there are often update requirements before a recently posted Flash presentation can be viewed. Note that Silverlight and QuickTime need plug-ins as well. These platforms do not share the same ubiquity as Flash. To edit a Flash object requires re-authoring, re-production, re-rendering and re-posting - translation: high cost to change a Flash object. Search engines don't capture, or index, Flash content. Therefore, Flash presentations do not contribute to search engine indexing (Search Engine Optimization).

Flash In The Pan:  The key players in the rampant growth of the mobile platform, iPhone and iPad, do not and will not support Flash. Millions and millions of Internet users - your visitors - cannot see Flash objects in their devices. There are sites that use Flash for navigation, or worse their entire site is in Flash. This is a fatal flaw for Flashless workstations and devices.

Wallaby Way:  Adobe responds to the threat to their marketshare by developing a program codenamed Wallaby, a Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool (March 2011). Now some (not all) Flash objects can be converted to a native browser language, HTML5 or JavaScript/CSS3.

Multimedia Tomorrow

Emerging and mature technologies like jQuery, AJAX, CSS3 and HTML5 are providing incredible functionality and effects within concise code platforms. Fully SEO and cross browser compatible, these platforms are the most native elements in use today. We work with these technologies daily and look forward to successfully applying them to your project!