X-Flash Websites: Websites just got a whole lot more powerful!
The use of flash elements in websites is becoming more popular these days. Looking at all the amazing visual effects and animations that Flash is capable of, it is not hard to see why. Flash allows limitless possibilities for navigation, content, attention grabbing animations as well as sound and music. But there is one big concern that many companies have when they consider using flash for their site… what happens when you want to change the content?
Content Management Systems (CMS’s) have become a necessity for today’s business and corporate websites, allowing staff to easily log in and change content and images, update product information, and anything else that is required to keep the website up to date. What most people don’t realise though is that CMS technology is now available for Flash sites too. On-the-edge web development companies such as SiteFX (http://sitefx.com.au) can build flash websites with all the bells and whistles you would expect as well as the essential flexibility of being able to update content whenever necessary.
An example of this technology is http://LDP.net. The front end of their site is 100% flash and of an artistic nature so as to represent their company as lighting designers. Their staff are able to log in to their CMS backend and update information on the projects they have designed, their staff members, their news and articles and the location of their offices around the world. Each time a staff member updates something it is reflected instantly in the flash website that their clients are viewing.
I call this technology “X-Flash”. As the user navigates around the site, the flash receives XML data from the backend and then displays the relevant data in the movie. Anything from text blurbs to image links to formatted HTML can be pulled in from the CMS and displayed in whatever format is needed within the flash movie. Another advantage of this is that the flash file iteself is only tiny (LDP’s .swf file is only 18.7KB) as it doesn’t contain any of the content. This means that when a user first goes to the website it can load extremely fast and then only download the data that it needs at the time.
This kind of technology requires a lot of actionscript expertise. Most components in the flash movie aren’t created at design time but rather are created dynamically by the actionscript according to the XML data that it receives. Lists of products or people or gallery images or anything else are constructed on-the-fly and the actionscript must be formatting, positioning and adding functionality to all of these elements. Most flash designers and flash design firms are great at the visual design and animation side of flash but know a very limited (if any) amount of actionscript. Afterall, 95% of flash websites today are self contained and completely non-dynamic. This is slowly changing as more and more businesses are discovering the huge advantages of X-Flash websites and as this happens the limited number of competent actionscript designers who are out there are coming under higher and higher demand.
X-Flash: the combination of XML, Actionscript and Flash to create a fully dynamic and updatable flash site. You’ll see alot more of them soon!