jonwallacedesign : Displaying innovation

The appearance of Flash is achieved without its downside.

The Site

Jonwallacedesign, a UK-based digital design agency, has an animated content carousel that gets around the drawbacks of Flash technology.

Jonwallacedesign highlights ‘Some of our latest work’ in a picture panel on its home page. A series of illustrations and project-related images scrolls from right to left on launch and continues to move along while the page is open.

Clicking on an image loads the relevant page from the Portfolio section of the site. Return to the carousel is via the Home link in the main navigation.

The Takeaway

At first glance, jonwallacedesign’s scrolling portfolio feature seems no different to other examples of Flash movie style content display. However, it has not been developed in Flash, but is actually an innovative use of technology. In simple terms, the content is no more than a bulleted list, displayed in an unconventional manner using the site’s style sheets. This makes it easily editable, available for cataloguing by search engines and accessible to all manner of users – in other words it resolves the major problems that adding a Flash movie to a site can bring.

Flash movies and animation add life and vibrancy to a website, but they come with a downside – impenetrable to search engines and to visually impaired users. By employing different technology, jonwallacedesign shows it is possible to have eye-catching moving content that enhances a product offer, without falling foul of accessibility practices and remaining invisible to potential customers on Google and the like.

First published on 05 January, 2010