How many uses flash?

according to Macromedia 98% in the US have flash 2 or higher installed. 90% (US) have flash 5 installed. I suspect that their numbers are a little inflated.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/f...html#appendixI

cheers

Worldwide Ubiquity of Macromedia Flash by Version
- March 2002 (NPD Online - Worldwide Survey)
.................F2.......F3.......F4.......F5.... ..F6
US.........(1).98.3%.97.8%.96.4%.90.3%.3.2%
Canada...(1).98.4%.98.2%.97.8%.91.2%.5.5%
Europe....(1).98.6%.98.2%.97.5%.94.8%.7.7%
Asia.......(1).97.1%.95.5%.94.7%.90.7%.8.1%

I still output to Flash 4, which as you can see is around 97% of my target market.

and beaten to it by spanky

jinx... buy me a coke ;-)

cheers

Yeah, and did you know that quite a large percentage of surfers hate Flash and will hit the BACK button at the first hint of it?

I wouldn't say a 'large percentage'... hehe... some don't like it. I'm not that partial to it unless I'm in a certain 'hey-impress-me' mood, but then again I don't keep javascript enabled most of the time.

cheers

Yeah and did you know there are ways to use flash and not scare off surfers put off by bad flash in the past?
flash intros and whatnot have damaged some people's opinions of flash and it will be a slow process bringing them back to the fact that flash is great when used properly... until then the best two-way bet is to use flash pieces or compartments like www.gammaxtreme.com not full flash sites.. that way to get the power of flash without the negative connotations of the horrible flash intros of '99 '00..

This is a very interresting topic. I would like to hear more about the pros and cons of flash for banners, sites or any other uses?

and I must say a large part of the blame goes to marketing departments that thought that it was a great idea to bore people with company statements and profiles before people got in the site.. I was once asked by toyota to feature their whole range of '00 vehicles in the INTRO to the main site.. I advised seriously against it, it would have run to around 200k before people got to what they actually went to the site for.
The other thing was the financial advantage.. it was very easy to charge 3 - 5k for an intro back in the day for a blue chip client.. so often you didn't turn it down no matter how silly and misguided you thought it was.

let's get some opinions on FLASH BANNERS guys ...

I am not spamming at all here ... I just had this exact same conversation with a client tonight ... and I know he reads the boards

flash on banners isn't a problem at all, in fact even though it's not the most fun use of flash, i've got to say that it's close to the best possible use of flash.. incredibly small file size, engaging graphics, far more capable of conveying ideas than gifs.. the perfect visual ad medium..
flash pieces and compartments are another great use of flash.. basically half page ads on your site.. brilliant.
the advantage of both of those uses is you can display a flat graphic if the user doesn't have flash and they don't get turned off with a "loading please wait" message. So 90-odd % of your surfers get an enhanced message, and the other 5 -10% get a normal ad... it's pretty much win-win..
the only downside of flash as an ad, is that it's not as easy to track clicks for referrals as with a gif where anyone can download it and ad their own referral ID on the end.. so it takes a little more effort to get that happening.. to get flash to read in variables, or use a commercial tracking system for it.
but it's also good for when you do your own ads for your own sites or for a sponsor who you think you can sell better with your own ads and people can't steal your galleries/sites/ads and change the referrer if you hard code it into the swf.

full flash sites on the other hand do have issues for surfers that don't like flash.. this is mainly because of having been annoyed by bad flash in the past than any intrinsic "badness" of flash.. flash can be made smaller and is more suited to the net given it's streaming capabilities than html.. but people took this to extremes and started going nuts making huge flash sites.. now, even when the flash site is small.. far smaller than your usual html page we have been conditioned to think that it is going to take ages to download..
you HAVE to offer a flat version of a full flash site, and I recommend using full flash sites for either real broadband use - ie a .tv movie site, or when you know the site will be small.. under 100k at least anyways.
but you can detect how fast people's connections are and deliver "cut down" versions on the fly to those on slow connections.. im considering doing a showcase site for the GFY designer showdown that will show this.. but we'll see how much time i have..

Flash banners are great..

except the ones that start with
"Ive got a secret website SO hardcore....."

flash???...nah...too much of it and the surfer forgets to join


.................................................. .......................................
www.gatorcash.com Affiliate Program kicks ASS

I would try to avoid those if posible just more load time, and often flash banners end up not doing anythign that regular banners would not be able to achieve

thats a flat out mis-truth.. once again - how can it possibly be more load time unless the flash designer is totally hamfisted? flash is S-M-A-L-L-E-R than animated gifs.. and should be used to do more than regular 2 or 3 frame banners can achieve. the amount of information you can fit in a 20k gif is piss compared to a 20k swf.

ok im going to open myself up for criticism here.. which is a fucking silly thing to do on this board.. but.. this button for linkuppro

</head><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><param name=movie value="http://www.flashturbation.org/spymaster/linkuppro.swf">
<param name=quality value=high>
<embed src="http://www.flashturbation.org/spymaster/linkuppro.swf" quality=high type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="205" height="30">
</embed></object></body></html>

A. "tells a story"
B. conveys how it's just at the push of a button
C. is small.

a gif would never be able to be so thorough and dynamic

you probably wouldn't use a swf if all you were going to do was 2 or 3 frames..

> and im not saying it's because of my flash work either - just the fact that flash is smaller because of vectors and library objects that can be used over and over again.

Flash is like every other tool in the world. It's good if used properly, it's horrible if used improperly. On it's own, it's neither good or bad, and the potential effects of a well done flash site or banner are far more impressive than a standard html/graphics setup.

amen brother

I like the bigplayer's flash banner ad on GFY.. I wonder how big it is..

Anyone that says flash banners are too big is an idiot. You can pack some amazing stuff into flash banners, that are much more informative, and graphically pretty than an animaited gif, and still have a much smaller file size.

On top of that, higher click thru rates with flash banners is what i've noticed.

Like the people who know what they're talking about have said. Great if used properly, terrible if overused by a flash amateur.

And that's exactly why i stay away from doing flash myself.. lol. I'll get someone else to do it!

29kb.

And it's for webmasters, so it's not like it was neccessary for the banner to be as small as possible either.

yeah 29kb is cool for the target market.. i've seen 34 - 36kb gif ones here so it's pretty good considering theres 5 statements being made and two backgrounds.. gives that real slick professional feel to the program.. kilobytes well spent.

a good flash banner can have an amazing CTR. surfers just seem to want to click on the naked woman scrolling by. i bet that most 'joe-average' surfers don't even know that a well designed flash banner is even a plugin; it's just a really eye catching area of the page.

cheers