HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, is a language introduced in the Internet’s infancy in 1991. It is the most basic and standard platform for designing web sites. It was designed to more effectively organize and manage content.  It allows you to create web pages, and HTML code is written to post links, text, images, and more to these pages. Along with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript, HTML is a cornerstone technology used to create web pages, as well as to create user interfaces for mobile and web applications.HTML is supported by all browsers on all platforms of computers. So whether you are using Internet Explorer on a PC or Safari on a Mac, an HTML website is easily understandable by all browsers. The most recent version is HTML 5, bringing video and animation integration straight to your site. This is something previous versions just couldn’t do.

Advantages

• The biggest upside of HTML is its ability to be configured to take total advantage of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What this means is that by being smart with the layout of your website, the wording on it and the meta tag information, you’ll be able to generate more traffic to your site by placing higher in search engine results. The more keywords you use in the text of your website helps to solidify the relevance of your product or service. By showing search engine spiders that your site is a good source of information on your particular product or service, the search engines will look at your site as being more relevant than a web site without as many keywords or pertinent information. Thus in turn your site should rank higher and receive more traffic than your competitors when a potential customer searches for your product or service on a search engine like Google or Yahoo.
• Compatible with all screen formats, making your site accessible and readable from any device: tablets; PCs; mobile; etc.
• If you include great keywords in content you post on your website, your website will be perfectly optimized for the search engine.
• Fast loading. No more plugins necessary!
• Easy to learn, easy to use. Even a novice can get the hang of HTML quickly.
• CMS integration. Easy to install and use, thousands of pre-built CMS will allow you to easily use HTML without knowing a bit of code.

Disadvantages

• Browser support. HTML5 is only supported by modern browsers (a.k.a. everything except older versions of IE prior to 9). You’ll find that older browsers don’t give you the same enhanced browsing experience as the latest browser version.
• Media licensing problems. Because of licensing issues, media must be compressed in a variety of formats in order to make it compatible with most browsers. It takes a lot of time, but this issue might be addressed in the form of updates.

Macromedia’s Flash gives you the power to add video and animated content to your website. Flash is a great tool to add interactivity and animation to a web site. It can be used to show movement or really capture the viewer’s attention. With the release of Flash 8, Adobe has added the ability to integrate video with website design. The ability to create a stunning website in Flash is at a designer’s fingertips. In order for Flash content to work, the website must have a Flash plugin. Website designers love it: they can create engaging and highly interactive web page components to please the user. These are sites designed in Flash. When you see something moving across the screen or animated in any way, chances are the site was designed with Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash.

Another nice thing about Flash is its creative potential. Since it is not confined by the rules of HTML, Flash websites can be designed to do just about anything and be laid out in any way the client desires.The downsides of Flash though are as extreme as its up sides. It doesn’t work seamlessly with all browsers. Older computers with outdated web browsers often have a hard time loading flash web sites. And speaking of loading, Flash web sites can easily reach very large file sizes very quickly. What this means is that anyone with a slower connection is going to be waiting a long time to see a large Flash based website.

When a Flash based web site is created, it is exported and uploaded to the internet as essentially a movie clip. This means that search engines like Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. can’t read the text that’s in your movie. By not having the ability to have a search engine rank your site your chances of being ranked highly are going to be highly impaired.

Advantages

• Simple. Adding animated content is super easy!
• Interesting site. With Flash animation enhancing your website, users will likely find the design more appealing.
• Quick to download and display, thanks to the fact it is more disk space efficient than bitmap formats, making it small in size.
• Bandwidth efficient.
• Has a large community of developers to provide support when needed.

Disadvantages

• No SEO help. Search engines don’t care at all about your fancy Flash content!
• Not compatible with all screens. Those viewing your page on their tablet or smartphone can’t see your fancy Flash animation.
• Another download for the user. To be able to read the code, the user must have Flash Player installed on their computer.

You can however incorporate the best of both worlds. The functionality and marketability of an HTML based site and the appeal of a Flash based site by using both wisely. If you make sure all your text areas are HTML based, then you are able to take advantage of search engine optimization. In image areas or with navigation you can use Flash movie clips. Since these contain little relative info for marketing search engines and instead could be better used to help capture the attention of a wandering visitor.

It may be a little more work for your designers and programmers to figure out, but the final product has the ability to be appealing and functional. Many of the sites we design incorporate both Flash and HTML for this reason. Our clients desire the chic and appealing feel of a Flash website but also want to rank high in search engines. It all comes back to balance. Balance the appeal with the functionality and your website will contain all the tools necessary to be visually stunning and highly marketable online.




HTML Website Example: