What %of visitors will see flash movies

[jccmoon]

Newbie advice needed.
I want to put a 'case of the week' movie on my medical front page. If I use flash, how many visitors will not be able to see it as a movie? (97% of site visitors use IE 5.x/6.x or netscape 4.x/5.x). What flash version for the movie?
Thanks in advance,James

[Richard_N]

98. something I believe is the oficial figure of the percentage of those that have flash installed.

We publish for flash player 7 as a lot still have not ugraded to 8 and I do not consider our work good enough to force them to to do so :-)

[truezeta]

Flash is pretty common across PC's. And the ability to download a Flash Version isn't difficult. (Especially if you offer a download.)) If your visitors want to participate in viewing your weekly movies then they should download the free flash file and enjoy.

[jccmoon]

Many thanks, flash 7 it is then. J :-)

[LifeinAsia]

I recommend you move the movie off the front page. Put it on another page and put a link to it on the front page. NEVER make people view a Flash image or movie! Otherwise, you'll have to be more worried about the number of people that never come back to your site.

[Richard_N]

As a developer of both flash and XHTML I have to say thats largely rubbish...

Yes of course there are a few zealots that hate everything for some reason, and flash attracts plenty of them.

Do what is right for you, and the overwhelming percentage of your visitors.

[LifeinAsia]

I don't hate Flash- I think it's an excellent tool. However, just like any other tool, it has the potential for misuse. Such as MAKING people download a huge Flash file instead of giving them the OPTION of whether or not to view it.

Since the original poster talked of putting it on the front page, that means everyone who visits the page has to see the Flash file, whether or not they want to. It also means that every time they visit that page the Flash runs. That's only slightly worse than having a Flash intro with no working "Skip Flash intro" link. And since the poster calls it a "movie" I am assuming that means it's going to be a lot longer than just a few seconds.

[Longhaired Genius]

I'm with LifeinAsia on this. I'm by no means a "Flash hater" but the steady rise of irritating Flash advertisments has lead me to disable Flash for general surfing and enable it only for items I particularly want to view.

[jccmoon]

Hi. Interesting comments. The sites message is that high quality cardiac imaging translates into high quality data to help patients. A case/week could be just the ticket.
In testing, I made a 750K *.avi into an 'okay' 17 frame 111x111 pixel *.fla 7 movie, (I think 80% compression) totalling 8Kb, showing an intriguing but recognisable cardiac disease. When clicked on, visitors will see the main case page.
If the rest of the homepage is tight and optimised, will I get away with it (<45k total)?
Should I put in an alternative for flash disabled visitors (overheads issue)

james :-)

[jccmoon]

But 8K is not perfect. How large can I go before irritating people?
james

[kiwidesign]

Hi,

IMHO I think flash is an awesome tool. As for putting it on the front page - I don't see it as a problem as long as you have a detection script running that lets users see something if they don't have the correct flash player and also gives them the ability to download the latest if they desire.

Cheers
Kiwidesign

[bedlam]

But 8K is not perfect. How large can I go before irritating people?
james

As big as you want, front page or no; you just have to do it right:

I don't see it as a problem as long as you have a detection script running

This is the right approach. But add to it a short 'intro' movie that does [/i]nothing[/i] but show a control to load the movie and perhaps a key frame from the movie--it'd be good to display the file size of the movie too. You should be able to make something like this very small.

Then set it up to load the main movie when clicked. This way, the movie:

• Fails gracefully,
  
• Allows the page to load very quickly,
  
• Occupies a high-visibility position
  
• Annoys no-one :-)
  

-b

[figment88]

Flash 8 has much much better quality than Flash 7. True it is not as a widespread, but the installation is seconds on a broadband connection.

The biggest reason not to go with Flash 8 is you have to pay more for the encoder.