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Study on the use of Flash
I Forewords :
Copyright :
The present study is the exclusive property of the IDfr company.
Any reproduction, even partial, is strictly prohibited except with a written agreement of the IDfr company.
Perimeter of the study:
The present study was carried out by the IDfr company thanks to the our Web analytics tool Wysistat. The data presented below were measured during 2 months (July & August 2003) thanks to our customers' Web sites (around 450 customers), that is to say a population of several million visitors. 45% of those Net surfers are French.
Flash ?
Macromedia Flash is a tool for creating and developping multimedia applications to offer to the owner of Web sites many possibilities of graphic creations and animations. You can download it on www.macromedia.com.
Data available:
The purpose of the data presented below are not to make a classification or to give an opinion on the operating systems or the browsers quoted. Some navigators or some operating systems were not deferred on this study due to their weak utilisation ratio and due to our objective to preserve a maximum of clearness.
II Study :
II.1 Global data :
On the first hand, almost all the Net surfers have a flash player (only 1,6 % do not have it).
On the other hand, 12.5 % have the Flash player 5 and below, therefore a site requiring Flash 6 would force 12,5% of these visitors to download a new player for Flash 6. Basically, it may result in a lost of sales.
If the flash player 5 is powerful enough for your design, that brings us to 96.5% of the Net surfers who can broswer your Web site.
fig 1 : Global data :
| |
Data |
| No Flash player |
1.6 % |
Flash
Player
Version |
3 |
0.5 % |
| 4 |
1.4 % |
| 5 |
9.0 % |
| 6 |
87.5 % |
II.2 Crossing per Operating Systems :
If we look at the distribution of the Flash player according to the operating systems, we notice that the users of Windows are more equipped with a Flash player (97% read Flash5 and inferior) than those using a Mac or a Unix/Linux computer (only 51.4% of Linux users have the Flash player 6 when 88.2% of the users of Windows have the Flash player 6).
fig 2 : Flash player crossed per Operating Systems :
| |
Windows |
Mac |
Linux/Unix |
| No Flash player |
1.5 % |
3.7 % |
5.4 % |
Flash
Player
Version |
3 |
0.5 % |
0.6 % |
- % |
| 4 |
1.0 % |
12.7 % |
12.5 % |
| 5 |
8.9 % |
7.6 % |
30.7 % |
| 6 |
88.1 % |
75.4 % |
51.4 % |
II.3 Crossing per browsers :
The crossing per browsers show that the IE and Opera users are well equipped whereas those using Netscape are less equipped as many of those users are using a MAC or a Linux/Unix computer.
fig 3 : Crossing the Flash players with the browsers :
| |
IE |
Netscape |
Opera |
| No Flash player |
1.6 % |
0.3 % |
0.8 % |
Flash
Player
Version |
3 |
0.4 % |
4.3 % |
- % |
| 4 |
1.1 % |
12.8 % |
0.4 % |
| 5 |
8.7 % |
15.6 % |
9.2 % |
| 6 |
88.2 % |
67.0 % |
89.6 % |
III Conclusion :
* Most of the Net surfers have a Flash player (98.4%)
* The difference in percentage between those which read the Flash 3 and those which read Flash 5 is weak (2 points).
We can conclude that if you want to add Flash elements onto your Web site, you can choose Flash 5 with no problem, allowing you to benefit from its additional functionalities.
* An animation in Flash 5 will be seen by 96,5 % of the Net surfers.
* An animation in Flash 6 will be seen by 87,5 % of the Net surfers.
* The crossing with the browsers and the operating systems are important: it is very important to pay attention to your target market. A site intended for the users of Linux should not contain Flash, an should be optimized for rendering with Netscape, Mozilla, etc.
IV Contact :
This entire study is available for free in PDF format on request: enquiries@wysistat.biz Please mention your contact details (First Name, Surname, Company) for consideration. |
