Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) have allowed for universal background width control, and the transition from Adobe Flash to Java brings opportunity for advanced search engine optimization (SEO) throughout the site.

Cabo Wabo, founded in 1996, was the creation of legendary musician and tequila aficionado, Sammy Hagar. After painstakingly seeking out the top tequilas to serve at his Cabo San Lucas cantina, Sammy decided to begin his own brand with the assistance of a tequila-making family with over 80 years of experience.

Today, production begins with Blue Agave cacti grown in Jalisco, Mexico by the same family with which Hagar originally partnered. After about 8 to 10 years,  the heart of the plant is extracted and transported to the distillery where it is used to create one of the most smooth and delicious tequilas in the world.

Cabo Wabo’s awards include a plethora of double gold, gold, and sliver medals from around the world. Most recently, the brand was awarded the Double Gold Medal for their añejo at the 2011 San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

These awards, their agency partner Meatoes, and their new WebSight Design site will really help to cement Cabo Wabo as the top tequila in the world.

Cabo Wabo’s New Site is as Smooth as their Award Winning Tequila is a post from: WebSight Design, Inc. company blog. With headquarters in the San Francisco bay area, WebSight Design, Inc. has been providing world class web engineering, creative design and hosting solutions since 1995. WebSight Design

The beautifully designed site has the look and feel of a full Flash site, but was developed using jQuery with Flash features, such as the video player.

Though Flash is a good choice when building a multimedia heavy site, it was not necessary for meatoes.  Using jQuery, we were able to provide the client with many of the benefits of Flash without the extra overhead.

Unlike Flash, because jQuery is Javascript based, it does not require a specialized programmer for the build.

Also, jQuery currently is compatible with more browsers, especially the mobile versions. This can provide a huge advantage, as Flash is not yet supported by most mobile browsers, including Safari on the iPhone.

And, when looking at search engine optimization results, jQuery is the optimal choice. Many of the basics to SEO are missing from Flash making it difficult for the search engines to index these sites.

We also provided the client with a site administrator that allows them to keep the website up to date and add new photos and content.

Now that the site has launched, the next step will be to initiate an SEO campaign.

meat and potatoes, inc. specializes in print, packaging, and advertising design. Its goal is to create visually stimulating work that is strong and to the point.

The site features a portfolio section showcasing the company’s work. Some of the company’s notable clients include Electronic Arts, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Capitol Records, and Lorenzo Cycles, with a site launched by WebSight Design as well.

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Founded in 1995, WebSight Design offers business clients a range of website design and development services, including website programming, website hosting, website marketing, and colocation management.

WebSight Design Develops Custom Site for meat and potatoes is a post from: WebSight Design, Inc. company blog. With headquarters in the San Francisco bay area, WebSight Design, Inc. has been providing world class web engineering, creative design and hosting solutions since 1995. WebSight Design

In 1996, Macromedia released a product named Macromedia Flash.  This was a vector based animation platform that allowed web designers to create animations using tools provided by Macromedia.  This resulted in smaller files with cleaner animations.  The major drawback to this was it required a browser plugin to view and most of the internet wasn’t on board with this yet.

Now days, there are better options then animated gifs when it comes to adding features to your site.  With the new advances in HTML and JavaScript, major browsers vendors are investing huge efforts in improving JavaScript engines in their browsers.  With all of this new attention to JavaScript dozens of frameworks, have popped up as tools for web developers to use.  Common frameworks include jQuery and jQuery UI, YUI, Prototype and Scriptaculous, and the Dojo toolkit.

When it comes to deciding between JavaScript based features and Flash based features in your site there are many different advantages and disadvantages you need to weigh.  JavaScript has several distinct advantages over Flash, first it no plugin is needed because it uses open Web technologies like Document Object Model, HTML and CSS.  Secondly, it is much easier to make animations that are accessible and 508 compliant and JavaScript is also viewable on many mobile devices, unlike Flash applications.

Although, jQuery/ JavaScript cannot be used for all animations, when it comes to certain types there are things that jQuery just can’t do.  It cannot handle 3D animation, audio/video players or fine user controlled animation.  When using JQuery you are also at the mercy of user end controls such as disabling JavaScript in a browser and resized text.

Is it in the budget?

When considering whether to use a jQuery or Flash based solution you are also going to want to look at the development and maintenance hours versus what the features are that you are looking for in your project.

JQuery can be used for almost all modules for a standard website, including scrolling images for the banner and photo galleries, interactive menus, form validation, and pop-ups and tool tips.  Because most of these tools are available as JavaScript frameworks this can end up keeping the development costs of your site down.  All of these features can be integrated with the CMS and dynamically updateable. Changes to the design of jQuery features most front end designers can handle and this will lower any maintenance costs you may incur.

A Flash application encapsulates all the code in the application itself.  First, this means creating the application require the use a specialized Flash developer, but this can be to your advantage if you are looking for features to your site such as audio/video player or 3D animation.  If you are looking to have complex multi-media in your project, you are going to have a higher development cost.  Changes and updates to Flash content can be executed via updateable XML files, but if you want to change the design of the application you will need to use a Flash developer with can cost more in maintenance hours.

What this decision really comes down to is asking yourself what are the features that you need.  Much of the “flash” in Flash can be mimicked at a lower cost with jQuery, but if your site is multi-media heavy; your best option would be to go with the Flash application for the ease of the end user and yourself.

Flash vs jQuery – Is it in the budget? is a post from: WebSight Design, Inc. company blog. With headquarters in the San Francisco bay area, WebSight Design, Inc. has been providing world class web engineering, creative design and hosting solutions since 1995. WebSight Design