Flash vs. HTML website?

[Luna]

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[TPF Sponsor]

[saltface]

You can redirect users based on what browser they're using. (Or are you more worried about connection speeds?).
Are you on linux or windows hosting?

[Overread]

Best thing is to have an html homepage that redirects people. They can get to the homepage quickly and then have 2 links - one to the flash and one to an html.
However if you can only have one I would go for html - that way you know loading times won't be scaring people away

[celery]

I didn't even know people were still using dial up. <-- joke.


My site uses flash and my personal belief is that if the person looking at your site can't afford cable/dsl, then they can't afford your work. Ya ya I know word of mouth, too bad.

However, if you want to be nice, you can build two websites and just put a link on the home page for non-flash users.

[Rhys]

Mine is html and even has a slideshow. You don't need slow flash sites. I have a 500mb/s connection and flash is pretty darned slow loading. I get bored and move on when I see flash.

[Rhys]

Rhys, I really like the slideshow idea. Where do you create your slideshows?

I have a Linux-based server and I use Website Baker to do my web design. I use the LazyDays template (with minor changes) and use the extra modules available to Website Baker, one of which is a slideshow.

[AprilRamone]

I didn't even know people were still using dial up. <-- joke.
My site uses flash and my personal belief is that if the person looking at your site can't afford cable/dsl, then they can't afford your work. Ya ya I know word of mouth, too bad.

I am totally in agreement with this. With the way the internet is these days and a TON of sites require high speed access, I'm not going to worry about the kinds of clients who are still totally dependent on slow connections. Especially since a lot of people can at least check it out at work if they don't have it at home.
That being said, one of these days I am planning to get a new template that has more html in it to help with my Search Engine rankings as with my flash site I have to cram all of my keywords into the splash page which sucks

[Renair]

Mines a flash site and not slow. Much better then my html site. Also for those who dont have flash there is a html version /coversion automatically and its ipod touch/iphone compatiable.

[Alex_B]

well, unless it is about animation, things moving, you can reproduce anything with HTML which you can do with flash.

often flash pages look only more professional since people make often less intelligent use of graphics when they use HTML. I myself am always tempted to switch to flash, but so far my website is still flash free.

as for the speed, I disagree, there were times when I was travelling for weeks, always on slow connections on mobile devices. My fast connection at home would not help then and the huge sites often were a pain.

[Speedy]

Don't use flash. It is way overused and insecure. If a website uses flash, my time there tends to be 20 seconds or less.

You can do a lot of things to your site without using flash, which can in turn make your site a whole lot nicer.

[Alpha]

The biggest problem with flash is that search engines can't read it. Your only hope, if you're so inclined, is to build a separate html-based site that has all the same content and redirect the SE spiders to it. That's a lot of work if you're building it yourself or a lot of money if you're paying someone to build your site.