Before the release of Flash, websites and web pages used to be very simple, dull and boring containing plain text, static images, and the occasional video. From videos to games and from interactive widgets to presentations; Flash is being used everywhere.
As the current leading solution for delivering interactive content, Flash has even pervaded into the PDF sphere. Adobe has made it simple for anyone to incorporate Flash components within a PDF file with everyday applications like Acrobat 9.
Interested in creating an interactive PDF with Flash for your website? There are a few things you should know first.
In this two part blog posting, we take a closer look at Flash: its impact on the Web, its integration with Acrobat and finally, its visibility with search engines while in the PDF format. So let’s take a look at how Flash has changed the PDF scene.
Starting with a look at Flash on the Web and Flash in Acrobat, you can quickly see the advantages and disadvantages.
Flash and the Web
First introduced in 1996 by Macromedia, Flash became a popular tool for creating animations, dynamic web page components and rich internet applications. Thanks to Flash, multimedia content is everywhere on the Web.
It’s actually hard to find a website that doesn’t contain Flash content, Flash animations, Flash banners or even Flash menus. A number of reasons account for Flash’s popularity as an interactive design solution for webmasters and web developers. Some of them are:
*Competition among websites. Naturally, all website owners want their website to stand out among others. There’s no better solution than Flash to improve a website, giving it an interactive, appealing, and professional look.
*Flash is no longer a tool to create decorative elements for websites. Flash is being used to create interactive Flash movies that can help users navigate among different pages and let them input and retrieve data from a website.
*Availability of Flash plugins for all platforms and browsers have made it the most adaptable and platform independent solution available to create web animations and movies.
*Flash enhances the user experience. Flash movies, videos and games incorporate high vector definitions and hence high quality outputs.
While Flash has found its way into all aspects of multimedia and interactivity designed for the Internet, there are a few limitations of using Flash as well:
*Flash works wonders if it’s used as part of a web design, but when whole websites are developed in Flash then it affects the website load time badly.
*Interactive Flash forms should be avoided as they are not advanced enough to provide better input and output support as in the case of many scripts is available.
*Flash content also faces difficulty in being noticed and getting indexed by search engines. If your website is totally based on Flash then you might be struggling to get visitors to your website.
Using Flash on your website really depends upon your individual needs and your target visitors. There are websites in which Flash animations and videos are used simply to enhance the look of static pages and catch the attention of its visitors.
And yet, there are also websites that are solely built upon Flash templates because of the nature and purpose of their business (i.e. they are based on Flash completely). Flash can be the best tool for your website if it’s used wisely and appropriately.
Flash and Acrobat
Starting in 2005, after Adobe acquired Macromedia, Adobe developers started working on mainstreaming Flash technology, integrating it with their own existing products.
When Acrobat 9 was launched 3 years later, it was a complete breath of fresh air for PDF users. Most of its newest features were Flash driven, and besides this, the Acrobat 9 release contained the full Flash Player 9.
This was also the first time that both Macromedia and Adobe technology gathered inside Acrobat. Even before the introduction of Flash into Acrobat, the concept of multimedia usage in a PDF file wasn’t new, but Flash gave the format a new dimension. The advantages of having Flash incorporated within Acrobat are comparable to those for incorporating Flash into your website.
Let’s have a look at some additional benefits:
*Availability of several templates in the form of single file to customize the look and feel of your PDF document. So no more simple, plain and static PDF documents.
*Conversions of various video formats into FLV and their incorporation in PDF documents.
*Conversion of raw data into graphs and pie charts using the PDF Flash functionalities.
*Development of complete interactive PDF websites, due to the availability of Flash in Acrobat.
*Acrobat 9 contains special Flash security features and enhanced user experience in order to avoid unauthorized access.
*The integration of Acrobat and Flash is useful for customers to generate interactive eBooks, Business Intros along videos, company information documents featuring a walkthrough video of their services etc.
*Users can easily import flash files into an acrobat file using Create or Multimedia tools in Acrobat and can place them anywhere within the text or a separate page for them can be made to be played by the user. Besides that, users can create a new PDF document from a flash file and can append other data later on.
So far, the integration of Flash in Acrobat is being considered as the best move Adobe has made in bringing interactivity to PDF documents, which will surely enhance with time. With the utilization of the Flash widget in Acrobat, users can enhance their PDF documents, share videos, animation and applications easily and conveniently.
Now that you have an overview of the advantages of Flash, you can judge for yourself if it is indeed what you need to jazz up your PDF files online.
If it is, tune in next week, as we take a look at the SEO challenges faced by Flash users. You’ll even get a few tips on how to get your Flash PDFs noticed by top online search engines.
