Flash Movie Vs. GIF
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Therefore, it stands to reason that when you find ways to animate pictures, you also find ways to express even deeper messages. Many developers and designers use two of the most popular formats for creating animated presentation, the Flash movie and the GIF, to convey these messages on websites. Although Flash movies and GIFs have many similarities when it comes to animation, they differ in their most common uses.
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Significance
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With the ever-increasing popularity of the Internet, there has been a growing need for website developers to utilize ways of increasing a user's interest in a particular website by adding more interactivity and animation. The use of Flash movies and GIF are effective ways of accomplishing this task.
Types
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The Flash movie is a format created through the multimedia program Adobe Flash, which is currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Flash movies are a frame-based format designed to add interactivity and animation to web pages.
The GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a bit-mapped graphics format originally developed by CompuServe. You can use several programs to create GIF files. One of the most popular programs is Adobe Fireworks, which is also developed and distributed by Adobe Systems.
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Features
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Flash movies are typically saved in the FLV container format file. They have more flexibility to create robust video presentations. With the use of scripting language a designer can manipulate various levels of interactivity into the flash movie.
For web designers, file size is always a major concern. In this respect, the GIF is ideal for use because of the ability to compress non-photorealistic images without degrading the visual quality of them. GIFs were not originally designed for user interactivity and are more suited for graphics and logos.
Function
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Flash movies are used when a robust video platform is required on a website. Like any other video platform on the web, they require the use of a browser plug-in to be viewed by a user. According to Adobe Systems, the Flash player, which is a browser plug-in necessary for playing Flash movies, is used by over 99 percent of Internet users. Because a browser plug-in of some kind is required for viewing any type of video on the web, the popularity of the flash video plug-in makes Flash movies one of the most common ways developers feature video on websites.
GIFs are used for displaying simple animation and all types of images that don't require the realism of photos.
Warning
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GIFs have a color limitation of 256 colors and this makes the format a poor candidate for high compression of photographic images. Flash movies have fewer limitations in regards to the creation of animated presentations and image compression, but require much more programming ability to create.
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