Top flash elements of web design for attracting visitors to your website

Flash is a very powerful tool for adding animation and interactivities to any website or blog. My overview will help you to understand what types of flash content can help you to make your website more informative and presentative. Also I’ve reviewed some great tools for creating flash content you may need.

Flash Animation and Effects

Text animations, interactivities and actions, animated menus and buttons, flash introductions, navigation bars, news tickers – that’s not a full list of what you can add to your web page using Flash technology. Of course, the main purpose of using flash animation is to attract visitors. Not to get an inverse effect, don’t over saturate you web pages with flash graphics. It must be used for highlighting key elements of your web page, not to turn the whole page into blinking and moving pictures which distract visitors’ attention from the information they’re looking for.

Tools that can help you add flash animation to your website:

• IncrediFlash XTreme – tool to help you quickly and easily build Flash animations without the need for Flash experience.
• Mix-FX – simple-to-use Flash software tool which lets you create Flash animations and Flash buttons in just seconds.
• Amara Menu and Button Maker, Amara News Ticker, Amara Intro and Banner Builder – user-friendly tools for creating different types of flash animation.

Flash Media Players

Flash technology enables you to embed both audio and video into your website. The advantages of using flash sound or video players are obvious – your visitor can have an enjoyable experience of listening to the music or watching a video clip. Also, it’s a great way for you to give them audio and video information for better promotion of your products or services. So, streaming website flash players are a great idea both for entertaining and informational sites. Flash media player can also be used for embedding still images into web pages. Nevertheless, I believe that it’s not the best way for representing a series of still images. It can be represented better as a flash slideshow (see the next paragraph).

Tools that can help you add audio or video to your website:

• MC Media Player – a Flash-based media player for embedding video, audio and still images in web pages.
• Flash WAmp – transforms any original Winamp skin to Flash-based web music player.
• Wimpy streaming media tools – make it easy to present and manage streaming audio and video.
• Fun SoundPlayer Maker – easy-to-use fully skinnable flash sound player for mp3 or radio streaming.

Flash Slideshows

Flash slideshow is a series of still images on the Web delivered one after another either automatically or manually. Flash slideshow is a popular technique of web-design because it lets user to view a series of images without opening other web pages. Up-to-date slideshow creators enable you to complete a slideshow with sound, text, transition and animation effects, preloader and navigation buttons. Slideshow in flash can be used for both artistic and informational purposes.

Tools that can help you add flash slideshows to your website:

• FlashSlider – tool for easy creating and sharing flash slideshows with photos, transition effects and music.
• Wondershare Flash Slideshow Builder – powerful flash slideshow software for making flash photo galleries and flash slideshows of your photos.
• IncrediShow – software to help you turn your digital photos into flash photo slideshow.

Flash Charts and Graphs

Charts are comprehended by the average reader over 80 times faster than data. That’s why flash graphs and charts are widely used for web design to substitute high amount of monotonous written data. Bright animated flash chart not only helps comprehend data faster but also is an attractive element of web page design. Depending on what data you want to represent, you can choose either usual animated or static chart with embedded data or real time web-chart with dynamic data.

Tools that can help you add flash graphs and charts to your website:

• Animated Chart – a Flash charting software which generates animated charts as movies in Adobe (Macromedia) FlashTM format for publishing them to websites.
• FusionCharts – a flash charting component that can be used to render data-driven & animated charts for your web applications and presentations.
• Swiff Chart – Swiff Chart lets you create eye catching animated charts in Adobe FlashTM format.