To Flash or Not to Flash…

Occasionally I am asked if I can create Flash animations. The short answer: yes I can. Flash is an art form in itself, and there are people who make a career out of it. I prefer to spread my abilities around a bit, and so will not create ultra-complex movies, or entire web sites based on Flash (at least for the time being!).

Flash is not always the right media for a situation--sometimes an animated gif will do. And my feelings on animation are that a little goes a long way. Please call for details.

I did use animation in my personal web site. The home page has a Flash movie, the rest of the pages are animated gifs. I had to use gifs on the subsequent web pages because of the remote rollovers I wanted to use--the rollovers could not be done with Flash movies.

This is the Flash version of this animation. It requires the Flash Player to work. Many (not all) computers today already have it installed. Sometimes this could be a deciding factor as to whether to Flash or not. The Flash Player can be downloaded for free from Macromedia. The file size of this animation is 37.4 k
This is an animated gif version of the same movie. To keep the file size down, it has been simplified. Animated Gifs do not require any special software for viewing--they can be viewed from any browser. File size: 32.6k
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