Content Managed Flash
Flash technology has gone through many stages of popularity during its relatively short life. In 1999 when I was working in a London agency flash was considered almost the only way to be creative online. If it was illustrated, if it didn’t animate (or if it did animate but didn’t have “parallax scrolling” - God forbid) or it didn’t take at least 5 minutes to load then you weren’t really trying hard enough.
It lost favour for a while as Perfect Usability made its claim on the top 3 list of ‘must haves’ for website builds, people believed that most browsers would block it or corporate client’s would never be allowed to see it. It survived in banner ads and student portfolios but if I ever mentioned flash in a sales meeting I would be bombarded with reasons why the client would never even consider it.
It has come a long way and now has a deserved place alongside any other web technology. Advancements are still being made to make it Google friendly but when it is used correctly it can enhance user experience and solve many old problems of web design.
When Wiliam uses flash it is mostly to solve functional or real estate issues, as well as allowing greater creative freedom for our designers. Something many customers don’t know is that flash can be content managed almost as easily as standard HTML through a CMS and using XML.
A great example is http://www.cyclery.com.au/ . The homepage of Cyclery (the website for Clarence Street Cycles in Sydney) is entirely flash. It shows the facade of the store and its iconic building. Using an XML backend through sitedock (wiliam’s propriety CMS software) it is possible to edit all of the text that appears in the news section, control when and how often certain animations appear on the page, flag new stock and events and easily manage graphic ‘billboards’ that herald new products.
So powerful is this form of content management that each week, when the store refreshes their window displays, they are able to take a photo of the new design, upload the images into sitedock and the flash refreshes. The site is immediately up to date and entirely relevant to the user.
Other examples include flash content managed maps such as those displayed on the PMP limited website. The map allows a user to view printing location in each state, but it goes further still. Once again using XML the CMS allows each location to contain relevant data – all managed by the client and all without ever having to open a flash file.
The same technique can be used in conjunction with a style sheet. So one flash element, controlled through the CMS, can be applied across any number of sites and styled to look completely different. This is a CMS controlled flash template. Utilised by the City of Sydney in their 2030 campaign: http://cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/2030/Default.asp
The flash is completely CMS controlled and the COS can reuse the template across many other of their sites for minimal cost of changing the content or design. You can see a similar design based on the original template on the 2008 NYE site - http://cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/2030/Default.asp
Content managed flash is the best of both worlds. It costs a little more in the first instance but if it is done well can save you thousands of dollars in flash development and creative expense.
