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In-Depth Information
would like on the car, submit the form, and be taken to the
“
build
your own
s Web site where the selec-
tions made in the banner will carry over. By allowing users to fill
out the form in the banner, you
”
section of the manufacturer
'
ve allowed them to complete a
portion of the task before they even get to the site.
So why wouldn
'
t you just build the banner out with HTML? That
would be a great option if we were only talking about a form and
two, maybe three, frames of images and text. However, your client
wants more than that. They want to see several different images of
the car smoothly cross-fade from one to the next on user interaction.
They also want to see 360
'
views of that car and offer users an option
to watch their new TV spot directly inside the banners, and the Flash
Platform is the best way to provide them with these features.
°
Microsites
So what about microsites? In addition to the banners, Typical
Motors wants to launch a site specifically for the new car. They
would like to see an interactive 360
view of the car, an image gal-
lery page, a video page, maybe a driving game featuring the new
car, and several other features. This is, of course, in addition to the
information you would expect to find on a car site like a specs
page or the manufacturer
°
s suggested retail price of the car. They
would also like to see a nice, fresh, creative approach to page tran-
sitions. Now you could probably accomplish some of those tasks
with anything like Ruby, PHP, .NET, or several others, but in order
to give them the full experience they seem to be looking for, I
'
d
suggest designing and building them a microsite using the tools
available in the Flash Platform.
'
Branded AIR Applications
An AIR application gives your client an opportunity to stay with the
potential customer after they have left the microsite and even the
browser itself. You may choose to build something like a branded
game, a video player, an inventorytracker,orevenanapplication
that would enable a customer to configure, order, and buy a new
car. You may even extend the functionality of that application to
remind the customer of things like scheduled maintenance or alert
them to things like safety recalls. By adding in long-term features
like those, you raise the likelihood that each user who has installed
the application will leave it on their machine, continue to use it,
and continue to be exposed to your client
'
s brand.
Mobile Devices
A lot has changed in the realm of Flash and mobile devices since
the last edition of this topic. One of the biggest changes is the fact
