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Images and Flash

Images in graphic web design have a few constraints that graphic designers tend to dislike. The first is the compression styles of JPEGs versus GIFs or PNGs. While GIFs are great for logos or images with solid blocks of the same color, JPEGs tend to clutter such images during compression. And while JPEGs are great for photographs and high-color items, GIFs just can't support a high number of colors, nor do they compress photographs well.

So, no problem, right? Wrong! What if you have your logo overlapping a photo, like check-out stand magazine covers always do? Then things get trickier. Or worse yet, what if you have a photo overlapping a logo?

Using backgrounds, you can easily lay a JPEG over a GIF and vice-versa. And while GIF transparency allows you to put it over an image with relative impunity, an image going over a logo (which is much more common, I believe) is impossible.

Or is it? Enter FLASH, the designer's dream tool. If you don't own a copy of Macromedia Flash -- and it's one of the only pieces of software that's both affordable and versatile enough to deserve to be purhased rather than pirated -- you should get it. Now. While Flash 4 was easier to use, Flash 5 and 6 (Flash 6 is called Flash MX for some reason) can still be mastered by following the tutorials that come with the software.

With Flash, laying one image over another is no problem -- you'll never see the images mesh better in other file formats. Flash's only downside is that it's not 100% compatible -- simply because some people don't bother with newer browsers even though they're free to download.

Flash is also an acceptable format for animation, assuming you're not using it to simply loop like an animated GIF.

Lastly, it won't be long before search engine spiders like Googlebot open up the shockwave file (.SWF -- what Flash exports as) and read any text inside to check for relevancy.

It's easy, however, to be tempted to use Flash for your entire site. This can look fantastic, but is a serious mistake, for a number of reasons:

Users like their back button. Skipping from scene to scene is great, but users would rather skip from page to page, so they can click back whenever they want to.
Search engine spiders place most of their value on the text on a page, and while they'll soon be able to read text displayed in Shockwave files, they're probably not there yet.
Search engine spiders can't follow the links in a shockwave file the way users can.

So don't use Flash for your entire site, PLEASE! As an occasional image, or as a menu system, however, Flash is perfect for graphic web design.