Flash can be very good when used in moderation. i do not personally like full flash sites even though i have done a couple before. I find them a little annoying, i am not sure why. it seems to me that the people that i know that have done flash sites do them for the security of the information help within, and not much else. When used for like headers and footers which contain little animations it can appear to make the website that little more interactive and gives the feeling that the owner has spent some time on it. Have some of you noticed that UN-professional flash sites are either Red or Blue?

Something really bad about full-flash sites is that search engines like google, etc.. don't indez the contents..

Althoug you can put the info hiden in the code for indexing porpouse.. taht''s why samll content sites are suitable...

i think

The site I am making now will be a flash site, and I don't think flash loads that slow. I will add a preloader to each page, and it might only need to load for like 5 seconds. I will be making another version of the site too, so that people who don't like flash can choose to have the html/php version.

Well, for those of us in the mobile community, flash really sucks. if you have a pda phone, congrats, you are lucky, except the flash has to be formatted for each certain phone to work right. And how many templates for mobile phones are there? too many. Plus, if you don't have a pda phone, and you have, say a tmobile sidekick, flash isn't even remotely loaded. so, you miss naviagtion and sometimes full websites. Thats my opinion.
peace
aaron

flash gives an enhancement mostly in personal webiez specially a full flash which made for broadband users, and some or most company also use flash for their presentation(full flash) and advertisement(banner size). actually their main target of using full flash is for the rich people where 99.99% of them use broadband in thier PC or laptop. since mobile phone, unfortunately is in rapid development but not fully compatible to flash webiez. also there are flash application for pda but not considered a flash webiez. what i mean that full flash sites is not meant to be for pda users, whose have a lower screen resolution and a minimal browser that almost same as the old browser. if you want a webiez that have a nice view in pda ,.. full sites or partial flash is not a good choice, for now

try xhtml or some mark up languages for mobiles,... now it should looks good

If your target audiences are both PDA and Computer users.
I would suggest you write to a script to read if the request is from PDA or a Computer then redirect them to the relevant page where the can see the page without much problem.

• Flash is visually simulating but it has its downside like downloading time, compatibility and etc.
• Plain HTML is safe viewing for almost all types of browsers.

Decide who will be your target audiences and work out from there onwards.

if people want to do full flash sites, i'd personally recommend giving users an option of viewing the full flash site or going to a html site instead. like avalon said, flash has its downsides and people do use older computers sometimes that make flash a pain to view, whereas practically anyone on any computer can view html pages.

usually when i'm relaxed and am casually browing, i don't mind full flash pages. however when i'm feeling grumpy or i'm rushing to just get simple information, i *hate* flash sites as it slows me down. sometimes i close the window before viewing the site even. that's how frustrating flash sites can get.

If it's for that mather.. i, as i surfer, rather get an .exe projector of the full site.. i mean, make it available for dwnloading... and make an html version of the site..
Flash it's usually a grafci design show off... and it's cool, but i would rather wait my dap software to to the waiting for me, and i could see the site faster, more closely... FREE OF EVERY STRING!... and, if you're preocupided about hits... publish new content from time to time..

I think it is good if you contorl the file size of the flash , you know not the big size equal to a good quality of illustration .

I agree with all of the above. However having said that I must point out a few things.
Animators really struggle to get good exposure. Video content on the web is just too BIG, especially for people with 54kb modems, etc. So for an animator flash is just the most amazing tool ever. I am an animator and when I want to showcase my work, I generally use flash and/or Director Shockwave. With directors w3d features I can have awesome 3d content on my sites with very little effort. For someone who is skilled in scripting and behaviours 3d content can change the look and feel of your site and make it OH SO MUCH MORE ATTRACTIVE, and interactive too! Plus I have to say that flash has so much potential, it may solve some of the above issues in later editions. Also remember that since you are not limited to rasterinfo (pixels), you can create Vector images a fraction of the size of a pixelated picture. Raster images have an X a Y and a colour code for EACH PIXEL! Vector has an x and a Y for each vector point, a curvature line, a line colour and a fill. The images size does NOT determine its quality, therefore it uses less space than any type of Bitmap or compression (ie. jpg/gif). Also because of scripting, which is EASY, it gives a very versatile tool to people who may not have the patience or the time to invest in a complex language. All of the above are very important reasons why Flash is indispensable as a web content authoring tool. Maybe I am just stating the obvious here, but an artist or animator just has one focus. For us to have to learn complex programming in order to showcase our work on the web is just unrealistic. Scripting is really sufficient for most animators and using it is a pleasure. Sorry for my rant, but I had to protect my BELOVED FLASH. @_@