Web design 2011 is characterized not only by its beauty, but first of all by its perfect usability and functionality.
Here are top web design trends of the year:

1. More CSS3 and HTML5

Finally the new and progressive technologies CSS3 and HTML 5 became widely used in web design. They are top trends of year 2011 and will surely become web standards in the upcoming years. So if you are going to order a new website, make sure your web design company will make it up-to-date and fashionable. Flash web design is used rarely and mostly some flash elements are integrated in the HTML5 web design.

2. Simply color schemes

Simplicity is one more popular trend of this year. There is nothing more effective than a simple message on a simple background. Green, yellow, red and blue are the most sued colors this year, but it’s better to use no more than three colors in your website. That’s why the usage of shades becomes more important.

3. Mobile Ready

Smartphones, tablets and netbooks become more and more popular. With the growing number of mobile gadgets the requirements for web design become higher. Now web design of every site has to be crossplatform. Web design for mobile devices made a great step forward with the help of CSS3. One of the most important advantages that now professional web designer can create a site that will be displayed properly in any user’s gadget. It is extremely important today, because the sales of mobile gadget grow every day and the number of your potential clients that are using them becomes only bigger. So, to prepare yourself for this new trend, you need a crossplatform web design.

4. Touch Screen Web Design

Your web design should be optimized for the usage of touch screen, not mouse. Most of mobile gadgets, netbooks and notebook are using touch screens. Make sure that your web site is optimized for it.

5. Depth perception

3D movies became top fashion, and that’s why 3D effects are now used everywhere. With the help of 3D you can make some elements of the website seem closer than others. A clever usage of 3D effects can make your web site extremely attractive and popular.

6. Big Photo backgrounds

The number of big beautiful backgrounds grows in 2011. Big photo is always an easy way to attract the audience. But of course a background should be connected with your content, so that it doesn’t harm usability.

7. Previews.

Google presented a new possibility to look through the search results using previes. If your site is using only flash, there will be problems with preview – Google doesn’t show flash elements there.

Flash technologies for web design

Progressive rich media technology flash (Macromedia Flash) is widely used in web design nowadays. Flash technologies are so popular today that you can hardly find any big and successful website without flash elements. Flash banners, menus and panels look nice and attract attention. Flash is also a great tool for advertising, but why are there not so many entirely flash websites? Is it worth while to create a flash website for your company? The final decision is yours, but in this article we’ll tell you about all advantages and disadvantages of flash web design.

Advantages of flash web design

1.       Attractiveness of your web site – Your site immediately attracts attention, it looks beautiful and seems more interesting. Graphics, animation, video and sound effects are really amazing.

2.       Unique design – Your site is unique and doesn’t look like many others. Flash design web site attracts more attention then sites with typical boring design. Read the rest of this entry »

In this article we are writing about advantages and disadvantages of Flash Web Design. For the time being Flash technology in web design is one of the most popular things. This technology bears mostly decorative purpose for websites. Flash pages impress users with audio and visual effects using colorful animation and interesting interfaces. Nowadays most of web design companies offer their client flash web design, they develop websites with help of vector graphics, colorful images and animation with hypnotizing sound effects. However among all advantages of this technology you will find many disadvantages as well. So you need to know both sides. Let’s begin from disadvantages.

Disadvantages.

Time and resource consuming.

Flash websites always much heavier than simple HTML page. As your website uses sound effects, graphics, animation or video it needs a lot time to load. Even if you will be using images in bitmap format, it consumes longer loading time especially if your visitor uses dial-up connection. And as a result web visitor moves to another page and live yours. Use less graphics when it’s possible.
Also if user has not powerful PC he may face with low performance, when he’ll visit your flash website with heavy animation, videos etc. He won’t like it, definitely.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) unfriendly:

There are some problems with optimizing your website for web search. Google can index flash websites only if they were correctly generated. And when it’s so, Google will read texts of your flash content and save it to its database with all supplementing information such as URLs, titles etc. However, even if your flash based website generated properly, flash content doesn’t rank as well as simple HTML content. Google prefer HTML pages because it is hard for search engines to how indexed content will appear in browser and because search engines “see” that users tend to visit HTML pages.
Modification and Editing.
There are such web developers that code projects in the way that only them can change or edit content on your Flash website. And thus, you are forced to hire them again and again anytime you will need to perform some modifications to your site. And beware of unfair web design studios, which may offer you secret code technology causing you for more expenses, but in truth there is no secrets; they just want to use your incompetency.
Advantages.
The main advantage of flash web design is visual impact. A flash site looks modern, interesting and eye-catching. It may be great for photographers as flash technology creates ability to create great galleries or for imposing companies for creating promo webpages. This technology provides vast possibilities for creating outstanding and interesting websites.
A finally here are some tips you want to know when developing flash website:
- Choose proper and professional web design company that able to create accurate and SEO friendly website. And also will develop it with right code and possibility to make as much changes by you as it possible.
- Whether you will try to make flash website by you or ask web design studio about it. Try not to use heavy graphics and video.
- Offer your users to choose whether they would like to see your website in flash or in HTML i.e. create two versions if possible, because your website could be visited from mobile phone.
- Do not use sound on main page or better let it be turned off at the beginning and user will decide whether he want to hear sound effects or not. Because your website may be visited in office or other quiet condition and a sound may be not desired.
And last but not least. If you think that for you flash based website will be useful for you personally or for your company, then create it resolutely. It worth it. Good luck.