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Macromedia, sponsor of the WBT Producer 2001 Conference, collected these top ten tips for creating usable Macromedia Flash sites from top Macromedia Flash designers, developers, and usability experts. These tips are a start and you can continue learning more about Flash, usability research, studies and articles by visiting Macromedia's web site at http://www.macromedia.com.
Here are the last five of ten tips from Macromedia.
6. Don't Overuse Animation
Avoid unnecessary animation. The best animation reinforce the site's goals, tell a story, or aid in navigation. Repeated animation on text-heavy pages distract the eye from the message of the page.
7. Use Sound Sparingly
Sound should enhance your site but not be indispensable. For example, use sound to indicate that the user has just triggered an event. Always provide on, off, and volume control on screen, and remember that sound significantly increases file size. When you do use sound, Macromedia Flash will compress music into small MP3 files and even stream it.
8. Target Low-Bandwidth Users
The smaller the download, the better. The initial screen download should be no more than 40k, including all Macromedia Flash files, HTML, and images. To reduce download time, use smaller vector-based images (unless the image is a complex bitmap, in which case it's better left as a bitmap file), and use the Load Movie action only when the user specifically requests a file. If a wait is unavoidable, provide a load time sequence with a progress indicator, and have navigation load in the first 5 seconds whenever possible.
9. Design for Accessibility
Make your content available to all users, including those with disabilities. Highly descriptive Alternate Tags allow your content to be interpreted by assistive technology. The magnifying Smart Clip for zoom is another easy-to-use Macromedia Flash feature that allows more users to see your content. For an in-depth discussion about making Macromedia Flash content accessible, see the Macromedia Flash Accessibility site.
10. Test for Usability
Have someone with fresh eyes test drive your site to make sure it accomplishes both user goals and site goals. Even compact Macromedia Flash animations can delay users from reaching their goal, so use Macromedia Flash's built-in Bandwidth Profiler (located in the View menu in Test Movie mode)to analyze how well your site will perform over various bandwidths. Re-test the site each time you make even small changes. Make sure your site testers match the demographic of your site's anticipated audience-especially if the anticipated audience includes users at various levels of comfort with site navigation.
