In recent times, 3D animation has become quite popular amongst the audience. Flash animation artists are also benefitting from 3D technologies. Earlier, they had to create the same image many times. Furthermore, they had to draw every frame by hand. All these required investment of several hours. Fortunately, the introduction of 3D technologies has simplified the process of creating sketches. It saves time as well.

Has Technology Taken Over Creativity?

Introduction of eye-catching technologies may convince you that creativity is no longer necessary in Flash design and animation. However, this is a wrong concept. Though modern technologies have simplified the animation process, they cannot think creatively. Creativity is the most critical skill of an animator and no amount of advanced technologies can replace it.

With technologies, you can overcome the limitations of creativity. However, you would always require creative ideas.

The Future of 3D Animators

To become a 3D animator, you require an in-depth understanding of various computer programs. In general, you need to know the following.

• Adobe Photoshop
• Autodesk Maya
• Apple Final Cut Pro
• Adobe After Effects
• Apple Soundtrack Pro

In the 21st century, animation artists are in great demand. They can work in movies, television programs, video games, instructional video, and commercials. They can even take up jobs in various NGOs and private sector. Currently, plenty of opportunities exist for 3D animation artists. Even in the future, they can avail various interesting opportunities.

3D animation offers various benefits:

1.    As compared to traditional animation, 3D animation is more engaging. Furthermore, with 3D animation, you can provide characters and scenes with a realistic feeling. Since 3D animation appears more realistic, it is used actively in interior design sketches and medical instructional videos.

2.    Watching 3D animation can be fun. At the same time, it offers useful features. With an attractive mix of style and functionality, 3D animation has earned popularity amongst a global audience.

3.    The major advantage of 3D animation is that it appeals to the aesthetics of the viewers and is functional as well.

With such tremendous potential, it is natural that 3D animation will earn more popularity in the future.

Is Flash Lost?

The answer is: NO. 3D animation is here to stay, but a large number of companies will continue to use Flash design for their websites, ads, banners, presentations. 95% general websites do not need using 3D animation, except if they want to go that extra mile and put-up online presentations using 3D. Even so, the huge load time is usually a problem and most companies do not take that risk.

Also, 3D animation is a specific skill. Not many companies have need for it, unless they are high-end animation studios. So, the demand for Flash is not dead and there’s hope.

The introduction of Silverlight 1.0 and its following versions has sparked a fiery debate amongst web developers and designers. Some believe that as compared to Silverlight, Flash design possesses more interesting and user-friendly features. Others, however, believe in the opposite. To help people to take informed decisions, we discuss the differences between Silverlight and Flash.

1.  Animation

Most people are aware of the fact that Flash utilizes the frame-dependent animation model. This means that we develop a single object for every frame for creating an animation sequence.

Let us assume that you want to shift an object across the screen in 4 seconds. To create the animation sequence, you have to figure out how many frames 4 seconds will require. Thereafter, you have to find out the matrices needed for every frame.

Consider the fact that to allow the player to maintain the frame rate, you have to insert a blank audio track. If you fail to do so, there are high chances that 4 seconds would turn out to be 3 or 7 or 8.

Silverlight, on the other hand, uses the WPF animation model. Since the model is time-based, one can state the start and stop conditions. Unlike Flash, Silverlight discounts the need to handle Matrices. Additionally, you do not have to gauge the location of objects in different frames.

2.  Size of Files

Flash opts for a compressed format, where pictures and content are placed in the movie. For this reason, size of files of a Flash element is comparatively small.

Silverlight utilizes XAML for its description language. It is non-compressed and therefore, size of file of a Silverlight element is comparatively larger.

3.  Accessibility

Flash offers rich accessibility features to people who have vision and hearing difficulties. Video caption feature of Flash solves accessibility difficulties of deaf people. However, people with other disabilities, such as blindness or low vision require video playback controls to use assistive technologies, such as screen magnifiers and readers, properly.

Users who depend on keyboard access can opt for various familiar shortcuts for controlling the video. Buttons, such as ‘Mute’, ‘Rewind’, ‘Stop’, ‘Play/Pause’ can be tabbed to the spacebar.

Silverlight 3.0 is considered the first browser plug-in that allows the user to access all system colors. This means that people who suffer from partial blindness can opt for normal operating system controls for performing necessary actions, such as shifting to high-contrast colors for easy reading.

When it comes to accessibility, Flash offers more features, as compared to Silverlight.

4.  Image Formats

Flash usually supports nearly all image formats. Silverlight, on the other hand, supports JPEG and PBG file formats only.

5.  SEO

A major complaint against Flash website design is that they are not user-friendly. However, recent modifications have allowed search engines (only Google) to index Flash. Google has associated itself with Adobe for simplifying the process of indexing Flash files.

In case of Silverlight, search engines can easily search and index the content that has been developed with the help of Silverlight applications.

Evaluating your requirements will help you to make the perfect choice between Flash and Silverlight. For example, if you think that majority of your visitors use Linux, go for Flash. On the other hand, if you are interested in increasing your rankings, Silverlight would be a better option.

Remember that choosing the proper technology is important for increasing your rankings and conversation rate.

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people who click on a site and then leave it, without exploring other pages of the website. High bounce rate indicates that the website has failed to retain the interest of visitors for a long period. We discuss few common reasons that can contribute to a high bounce rate.

1. Loading Issues

Web visitors have short attention span. If your website takes excessive time to load, there are high chances that your visitors will move on to other sites. Factors that usually interfere with loading time can include Flash designs, buffering of videos, and large pictures.

To improve bounce rate of a site, a website design company should pay attention to all these factors.

2. Lack of Good Content

Most people visit sites to find useful information. If your site contains poor quality or duplicate content, it will fail to retain interest of the visitors. To nurture the audience’s curiosity, provide them with valuable content. While incorporating content in your site, consider the following factors.

• Use an attractive headline. Remember that a good title encourages visitors to read rest of the article.

• Provide your audience with relevant and fresh content. Post topics related to latest news and issues.

• Grammar of your articles should be perfect. Correct grammar creates the impression that you possess good knowledge. Readers usually react positively to a well-written article. Ensure that the text of your site has a professional look.

• Web viewers do not have the patience to read huge articles. Therefore, keep your articles short and minimum. Avoid repeating the same information in your articles. Length of the articles should vary between 300-600 words. Do not include slang or abusive words in the text.

• Avoid copying content of other sites at all costs. Post interesting and original ideas. Original content will convince the readers that you are serious about solving their problems and offering useful information.

3. Poor Web Design

Poor website design can contribute to a high bounce rate. Therefore, paying attention to website designing is critical. Ensure that the design is neat and user-friendly. Additionally, consider the following issues.

• Your domain name should be brief. The ideal length of a domain name is 10 characters or less. Additionally, opting for one-word domains can be a great idea. Remember that if viewers have to type a long URL, they may feel frustrated.

• Use a memorable domain name. This will help the users, when they would revisit the site.

• Your domain name should contain words that are easy to spell. If you use words with complicated spellings in your domain name, visitors can land up in any other web page.

• Opt for simple and yet, creative web designs

• To capture interest of the viewers, use an attractive header.

4. Navigation is Important

Navigation can have a strong impact on the bounce rate. Poor navigation will force readers to close your site and explore other sites.

• The navigation system should tell your visitors exactly what to do. This will help them to explore various pages of the website.

• To attract attention of the visitors, highlight the web navigation buttons.

Considering all these issues will help you to lower the bounce rate of your website. Encourage your readers to provide you with feedback. This will help you to understand your flaws and work on them.

Have you ever wondered why Coca Cola makes millions of dollars all over the world when there are other soft-drink companies in the market? They sell because of two things: their USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and marketing strategy. The same rule applies in the website design industry. If you are a freelance website designer and want to get regular projects, you need to highlight your USP to the clients and convince them to choose you.

Think about what makes you different from other designers. There are lots of web designers vying for the clients’ attention. Why a client should hire you when there are others? If you can’t stand out from the crowd, you can’t survive.

Find Out What Makes You Special- What is your USP? Are you an excellent logo designer? Can you create unique and wonderful layouts? Are you an expert in Flash design? Whatever your USP is, make it your trademark and convince your clients that you know about it better than anyone else in the field. It will help clients choose you quicker.

For example, if you want to brand yourself as an expert logo designer, people who want to design a logo for their company will come only to you.

However, there is a drawback with such branding. If someone wants to design a website in WordPress and you claim yourself as a Joomla expert, they won’t hire you. Another problem is, if that particular field loses its popularity, your career is over.

Some clients like to hire a web designer a few weeks before their website launch, and demand project completion within a very short deadline. If you work very fast and can deliver a logo within a week or two, that can be your USP.

Create A Respectable Profile- Make people aware of the fact that you are an experienced web designer. Start writing blogs and share useful tutorials, participate in seminars, etc. Once you establish yourself as an expert, you would be swarmed with new projects.

Also, you should have a portfolio site. When potential clients visit your site, they must be able to see your work samples and decide. Include your past clients’ testimonials in the site. When a future client reads the praises of another reputable client for your efficiency, reliability and timely delivery, he will be convinced about your capability.

Localize Your Services- Getting projects and earning money is lucrative, but the competition is much tougher when you compete with designers all over the world. When you present yourself as a local designer however, local clients will be more interested to do business with you. Especially, small-scale businesses don’t want to hire foreign companies, but when you present yourself as “web designer in Kolkata” or “web designer in India”, they can approach you without worries.

Flaunt Your Own Style- Over time, you will gather experience and will be able to create your own style. Try to be distinctive so that clients can recognize you when they see a website designed by you.

Also, besides designing a website, offer something extra to your clients. For instance, you can offer logo design services with website design at reasonable rates. When you offer multiple services, clients don’t need to go to other designers. This way you will save your clients’ money, as well as time, and they will be interested to hire you again.

How Much Do You Charge? - Some designers think that if they offer their service at a cheap rate, clients will certainly hire them. But there are two problems in this: low price is often considered equal to low quality. Also, in today’s competitive market, quoting the lowest price is impossible. There is always someone ready to offer a cheaper rate. Don’t try to make “cheap rate” your USP. Charge a reasonable rate and show your clients that your quality deserves a lot more.

Just like designers search for new clients; clients also look for reliable designers. A business owner always wants to hire designers who offer impeccable services, quotes an affordable charge and have expertise in their profession. When you highlight your USP, it becomes easier for a client to make up his mind and hire you.

Online promotion has become mandatory for many companies. An email newsletter is a direct medium of communication. It reaches the target audience’s inbox and conveys your message individually. Compared to online banner ads, email newsletters get more attention because we generally read mails we receive in our inboxes. An email newsletter can help you to make people aware of your service and convert a casual visitor into a regular customer.

However, to make a newsletter appealing, you should focus on its graphic design and layout factors. Here are some of the most important designing factors that can make your email newsletter a successful medium of communication and promotion.

Have a clear focus- When you design a newsletter, plan its purpose in your mind and make sure that your newsletter design reflects that purpose successfully. Your email newsletter can inform your target audience about your existence, a discount sale, subscription or anything else you think is important for your business. Whatever the purpose, the design should inspire the customer to take an action.

Simple design- Don’t complicate the design with unnecessary images or text. People spend only a few seconds reading an email newsletter. They don’t even read the whole thing, only scan the main portions. A simple and clean newsletter design conveys the message more effectively. Content should be short and descriptive so that readers can get the message instantly.

Use tables- Using tables in the newsletter design is a good idea. Tables offer visual harmony. It keeps the newsletter organized and all the elements in the newsletter are displayed properly.

Use minimum images- When you check newsletters in your mail, you must have noticed that images are not displayed until you give permission for the same. Gmail strictly follows this rule. So does Rediffmail.

If an image-heavy email newsletter comes to the inbox, Google asks users whether images should be displayed or not. If the recipient declines to view the image, the main purpose of that newsletter is failed. For that reason, use only a few images in the newsletter, like your logo, banner, or product image. An image rich newsletter looks great, but when the recipients receive it, they see a blank page.

Never use video or animation- Just like images, video and animation look attractive but not useful for newsletter design. If you want to use animation, then use it in the website design of your site. Nobody likes to download Flash player just to see a Flash design in your newsletter. Most of the backdated browsers don’t even support video streaming or animation.

Emphasize on “call to action” button- The main purpose of sending a newsletter is to urge the customers to click on the call-to-action button. Give the message clearly and direct them to the call-to-action button. Make the call-to-action button large and clearly visible. The button should describe the action you want the customers to take. For example, your call-to-action button can show, “subscribe now”, “join us”, “get flat 50% discount”, etc.

Link to web version- Sometimes, newsletters don’t view properly in the inbox when users click on it. It’s not the designers fault. Sometimes older version of browsers don’t support modern newsletter formats. The wise thing to do is to add a link to the web version of the newsletter. Users can click on the link and see the newsletter without any problems.

Portable device optimization- While designing a newsletter for promotional purposes, try to optimize it for smartphones and tablets. More and more people are accessing their inboxes from their portable devices. If your newsletter does not support these devices, your marketing campaign can be a failure.

Email newsletter is one of the most affordable and useful weapon for online marketing. Without marketing and promotion, even the best companies cannot earn profits. Email newsletters are extremely effective and result oriented, if used properly.

HTML 5 has clearly had a supernova effect on the web, but like black holes left after star bursts, Flash is the unavoidable truth of the Internet. Flash is here, doing well and will be so for quite some time in future.

Flash Designs have been around for many years now, best used to make attention-grabbing and dynamic website designs, and abused to create irritating, over-the-top advertisements that hijack our screens during website visits. However, where presentation is concerned, none does it quite like Flash.

Flash experience is wholly entertaining and captivating. One doesn’t have to be a web designer to appreciate the intricacies of Flash designs, nor a naïve web user to gawk at what Flash(es) on screen. For anyone who enjoys active interaction, Flash still offers enough to look forward to.

But change is constant, isn’t it? And so enter HTML 5, the newest addition to the web family.

HTML is the web’s lingua franca and anyone even slightly involved in producing web content, or blogging, should be fluent in HTML. Frankly, if you do not know HTML, you simply don’t belong to the Internet. And, where HTML 5 is concerned, it’ll certainly be easy on you if you already know HTML.

HTML 5 is quite the celebrity of the moment. The current favorite of the Internet, many web designers are making the switch from Flash to HTML 5. For designers, HTML 5 is easy to work on and code with. It is extremely user-friendly too.

Thus, if HTML 5 gives you a dynamic scripting option that makes navigation through pages easy, I don’t see why you can’t leverage on that. However, when it comes to creating truly beautiful websites, Flash outweighs HTML 5. Sure, HTML 5 will be fun, but Adobe Flash isn’t going anywhere yet.

Lets face it. Flash sites are heavy and they take time to load all its content that may include sound, animation, text, video and so on and that simply means, it requires a good deal of patience from the viewers. However, it is your moral responsibility to inform the visitors how much time is actually left to get the website design components loaded completely. Previously, website designers usually feature a clock or something of that kind to inform the readers but time has changed and so are the visitors. Visitors are no longer interested in watching a watch clicking. They are now looking for something more interesting and engaging. And the only way, you will be able to make intro of your website interesting is by adding a fascinating flash preloaders that are powerful enough to give your flash site a facelift.

Do They Serve Any Purpose: Yes of course. Besides adding a startling visual twist to your flash website, they serve an aesthetic purpose. If you can make it look interesting, it quells the urge of closing the window and this is exactly what you need the most. Use of growing bar, percentage value or incrementing counters are passé. You need to make it look different so that viewers do not lose their focus while your site is getting loaded in the background. A boring look of flash preloader can serve as a deathbed to your marketing campaign.

Now, if you are running short of creative ideas, just check out some of the best flash preloaders to get some creative nourishment:

Water Filling Flash Preloader: – The approach is mind blowing. Though the concept though not novel, it is still good enough to keep the viewers engaged by creating a suspense. The structure of the design is something to take note of.

A Smooth Flash Preloader: This flash preloader is mainly aimed at its consumers who are looking forward to healthily nutritious collections of smoothies. This flash preloader goes perfectly with the theme and the animation is good enough for retaining the interest of the viewers.

Flash Preloader With Numbers: – This preloader is starkly different from the rest of other of its clan since its numbers do not give any ideal of the loading time but the animation is dame good to keep you hooked on to it until the very end. The cleaver use of numbers is the in thing of this animation that you can hardly ignore.

Flash Preloader With A Smile: – Say hello to happiness with this amazingly designed flash preloader that will certainly give enough reasons to smile. Though it takes time, it really worth it. It does not have any grand animation and it mainly rides on its simple message and interface which is a good riddance from the others clumsy and over-crowded flash preloaders.

Simplicity At Its Best: This is what you may term as super simple. However, we found it too simple to keep the attention of the viewers for a long. We believe that this flash preloader is seriously lacking a creative touch.

Flash is always fraught with frivolous issues that often play spoilsport with its popularity. First, it was the indexing issue (it is still having problems with this issue since most of the people have not yet shrugged off their usual inhibition toward flash) and then comes the loading speed. As Google has declared its apathy towards heavy sites, most website owners are not showing any interest to have a full flash site. But flash based website design does not necessary have to be heavy and non-indexable all the time. You can introduce some dramatic improvements in your flash-based website by following and implementing some simple flash website design tips that can help your flash website to get maximum exposure:

Do not Use Only Images: This is one of those few mistakes that is recurrently committed by most of the flash website designers and developers. Google is unable to crawl images and therefore, the less your will use images the better for your website. By adding text as oppose to images, you will be able to make your website SEO friendly.

Use Alternate Version: – If possible, try to use an alternative HTML version of your full flash website because that will enable you to optimize it properly. Furthermore, visitor will get an option to view your website either in Flash or in HTML depending on the speed of his internet connection.

Use and Utilize HTML Tags: – It is quite obvious that a full flash website is not half as good as other HTML websites, but still there are rooms for improvement. Since you all know that Google cannot crawl anything that is included in the <embed> </embed> tags, you should try to utilize some HTML tags as much as possible. Flash sites usually come with this below-mentioned structure:

<embed>Your Non-Indexable Flash Code </embed>

Therefore, if you add something within this structure, it will never get visible  to Google or any other search engines. To make it visible to search  engines, you need to use this below mentioned structure for this purpose:

<html>
<head>
<title > SEO friendly Flash Web Design Meta Title </title>
< — use other meta and header elements in this space — >
</head>
<body>
<embed>Your Non-Indexable Flash Code </embed>
</body>
</html>

Now, these are all you have to make your website a little bit more SEO friendly. Try to be accurate while writing the Meta Title and Meta Description section since, this is what Google is going to get from your website. Continue reading ‘Optimizing A Flash Website: Better Exposure in Search Engines’ »

A website created in flash attracts people most easily. Its colorful presence with animated items add to the beauty and splendor of the flash website design. With technological development, even the content in a flash supported website can be customized with the help of the Flash CMS or Flash Content Management System.

Know about flash CMS:

CMS is a specially designed application that is used to manage the flash content in a website. CMS is used with the core purpose of generating browser environment in a flash content website. It helps in editing and managing various Adobe Flash supported items such as texts, images, animations, sound, actions and movies. Very user friendly and easy to use, flash content management system don’t need any programming skill to edit contents.

There is an array of Flash CMS web development software available in the market that promise to provide you a lot of facilities and benefits. But picking out the right one from the crowd is the most important and hard work to do. Here we help you with some guidelines that are sure to assist you well in choosing the right flash CMS application according to your need. Continue reading ‘A Guide to Flash CMS (Content Management System)’ »

A company sets up its visual interface with help of a website. In today’s hi-tech world, a site acts as a virtual platform for business transactions and business promotion. So it is very much necessary to devote your time in designing a site as the prospect of business of an organization often depends on it. The visual effects, management of content, color combination etc are to be taken in account for a site designing. The more attractive a site is, it is bound to fetch more traffic.

If it has to do with the appearance of a site then it can be made visually pleasing to the visitors with the use of flash based techniques. But just look and feel of a site will not improve the business prospects of a site. The site is also required to provide authentic and resourceful content. A site has to be user friendly and at the same time well designed. Continue reading ‘Solutions for Flash Based Web Designs’ »