I have a completely non-flash website that acts like flash. I think it works great.
D7000 / NIKON 85 1.4 / NIKON 17-55 2.8
http://www.ericholmesphotography.com
http://www.facebook.com/ehp.holmes
NickA did a nice job of answering your question. HTML 5 adds new tags that allow web developers to specify features that are implemented by the browser (video playback, for example). So I want to play a video I can instruct the browser via an HTML tag to treat a piece of content as a video and the browser will know what to do with it. Flash on the other hand, relies on little programs that are downloaded to your computer and hosted on an HTML page in your browser. You have to have an installed piece of software (called a runtime) on your computer in order to execute the instructions in the Flash site. The Flash program instructs the Flash runtime to play a video, show a slideshow, etc.
Flash works relatively well and is well established on desktop computers. Apple iDevices do not have a Flash runtime, so there is nothing available to follow the instructions imbedded in your Flash site. Adobe is slowly walking away from Flash as they see the writing is on the wall for its end of life.
Hi there - thought I would add my two cents. Flash is fine if you are using a service that gives you a shadow site for the iPad and iPhone. One service that does it all is FolioLink.com. They just launched a highly customizable HTML5 design for photographers and they have been doing Flash for a long time that run shadow iPad, iPhone and search engine sites in HTML. I know you said you want to buy the template and handle the hosting on your own, so FolioLink is maybe not a match for you, but it is a great solution if you are looking for an all in one deal that you can customize and manage on your own. The site behaves like Flash, but is built with HTML5. Let me know what you think.
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I just bought my emmet template the other day, bludomain hasbeen exceptional about their customer service, and no, I don't work for them lol, I red a lot about flash vs HTML websites and im glad that they (BD) got one HTML, like you said, being a moma and trying to take care of business does takes time and the last thing one wants is spend hours trying to figure out how to put an image on your website, BD is easy, inexpensive and I love their templates.
Can't you have both? an HTML and flash version?
Christina S. Cericola
www.csjstudios.com
You can have both if you design your site in such a way. I lot of people just use Flash in certain places on their site, other have their whole site in Flash. Ideally, if you want to go all Flash, you normally have some kind of watered down mobile version. But Flash is slowing phasing out. There are other alternatives now that don't have the overhead or learning curve of Flash (if you are into writing action script for Flash).
I have my site through portfoliositez.com -- you can have your flash site for computer users and an ipad/iphone mirror site for those on the go. Works well for me.
I have some experience with both, flash and html. My vote would go to html. I was a big fan of flash but when i got my first mobile phone with windows mobile and the second one with android i started to see that html works fine and flash isn`t.