Not too long ago, Flash was used in many websites to create stunning visual effects. Flash, unfortunately, was not based on any standard and produced by one company. Adobe Systems, formerly Macromedia. Not everyone in the tech world likes this type of monopoly (flash was at some point installed on around 98% of desktops).
Interactive websites? Animation, the WOW effect…
With the development of javascript libraries, such as jQuery, it started to become a lot easier for site builders to create more interesting visual effects on their web pages. What’s more, because jQuery makes use of HTML / CSS to a large extent, it also became a lot easier to upgrade such animation effects.
In the past, if you had 3 big images scrolling left to right, and you wanted to add a 4th, you had to either redo your flash file. Or write some kind of a script that loads image sources into the flash movie via javascript.
With jQuery though, these type of updates became a lot easier. As in most cases it would simply require an additional <img> tag in your HTML.
The result…
The result is that it has, and is still becoming more and more, a lot easier to create beautiful visual effects with the relatively minimal development effort. Such effects are not only confined to animating images but can also play a big role in creating better user experiences by e.g. showing a person only the bits that you think she’s interested in at the time, while neatly tucking away bits that might not be of immediate importance to them.
It might be time for yourself, as a website owner, to look at your website differently. Departing from copy and pasting of text to highlight the information that you think a particular visitor to your website might be interested in, at a particular time.
Drop us a line if you’d like to come and sit down with us to talk through what these might be.