Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Flash?

[attila]

Hello

Why some hosing companies offer Flash as a feature among their services?

I am trying to understand if Flash is a client base technology or server base.

Thanks for your help

[blue27]

Flash is client based. That is why you need the flash player on the local machine.

[UH-Matt]

To increase their features list.

[ENSupport]

what Matt said

[Locke]

lol, for some that's why. Some hosts actually forbid streaming audio/video on some of their plans or all of them, I can't seem to find them anymore though

Anyways, it's just either to make their list longer, or to say they'll allow you to have flash on your site, and sometimes it's both.

[ub3r]

i remember back in the day, i was with brinkster. and my navigation didn't work because brinkster didn't have MIME types configured or some junk.

[ANMMark]

I have always said the same thing lol

I believe they include that for people that don't know any better. To someone fresh in the hosting industry that long list, and the fact theat they may not know that Flash is not a feature hosts offer, this may determine whether they or some other host gets the sale.

Although Flash is streaming technology, it most certainly is not necessary to stream anything in Flash. As a matter of fact, most flash animations use absolutely no streaming whatsoever, just vector or raster images.

So, primarily, including Flash as a feature on your hosting spec list is either to lengthen the list or persuade newbies into buying.

[blue27]

It's kind of like saying we offer Dreamweaver hosting.

[ANMMark]

exactly. lol

[themacdaddy]

Well it is true that they took a whole 5 seconds to configure the .SWF as a MIME type in the web server.

But today if you are wanting to get harcore with Flash MX you need to look at a ColdFusion MX host and maybe Flash Communications Server Host. This allows many server-side capibilites to send information to the Flash client. But yes Flash by itself is a client based thing.

If they don't have the SWF mime configured then RUN FAR FAR AWAY.