Flash and Actionscript Development  

Flash is a powerful tool which can turn a website into a more engaging experience. Lesser known is that flash is also a very powerful development environment. We have used flash for many years to create administrative interfaces for websites along with editable graphical front end systems - ie slideshows, editable graphs etc. Flash more recently has proven to be an excellent way of incorporating video into your site. With a much higher level of installations than media player or quicktime, flash is a brilliant way of getting your video on-line for those broadband users who want to really see what you're up to.

Flash is commonly used in web development for whole sites. When the site is for a well known brand that attracts traffic without trying this is a perfectly viable use. For the rest of us search engines matter. It has been argued that search engines index flash just a much as HTML, in fact they can't, particularly when the sites appear to exist at a single address (ie all in one page) this makes it impossible for search engines to direct people to the most appropriate part of your site. Therefore HTML still needs to be the main focus of your web development, utilising flash when it works best - as an administrive tool, or as eye candy at the front end. This is exactly what we do here at Duo, we use flash to make sites look good but always accompany it with that oh so important google friendly HTML.