FLASH: Overall Design Question - mixing flash and html

[Jefferis]

You all ever heard of the proverb: "The Cobbler's Son has no shoes?"

That's the way I feel... I've got so much work to do for clients, I never 

seem to get around to finishing my own site :-(  or learning the rest of 

Flash. 

I love the design and art part of my work, but I get more demand for now 

in marketing and writing and simple sites... oh well, at least I am 

making a living... but my site gets left for weeks at a time... and I 

feel unprofessional... I still haven't advertised it yet because of 

that...


But here's my question and observation.  I have viewed quite a lot of 

your sites, and they are ASTOUNDING. But I am just as concerned with 

reaching that 15% that doesn't have Flash and won't install a plug in... 

because of commercial concerns.  SO for now, all my sites have to be DUAL 

html and Flash for those who express the desire, and plain html the most 

common.


One thing I notice is that dedicated flash sites seem to use all menus 

which load various movies, which means that the entire LARGE file is 

loaded before you see any part. Once loaded, you switch between movies 

relatively rapidly. 


This situation makes it seem as if moving between plain html and Flash is 

un-aesthetic, and the norm is full Flash and only flash when a client is 

capable. But I am wondering if this flashy use of Flash should be the 

norm.  I noticed the problem when trying to use a Flash Menu to go back 

and forth between my html pages and my flash samples, etc. The use of a 

separate flash movie as a menu makes a back button require time to load 

[first time] instead of being an instant cached page...  I am not happy 

with it.  {PLUS I find that the text menu's with ample mouseover areas 

are still hard to click and select without hitting an adjacent one, but 

that just may be my fault]. {JC has written me a fix for this situation, 

but still, large movies require a lot more waiting for many clients].


So, I am wondering if a better alternative as a low bandwidth norm is to 

use small Flash graphics on html pages, as faster versions of animated 

gifs.  I.E., instead of making the whole site Flash enclosed, to use 

Flash as the ornament...  So far, most of you pros don't do your sites 

this way, and perhaps that is just because you want to show off your 

capabilities [ and I don't think you are wrong for doing that!].   


But for average clients's sites, I would think faster loading, low 

bandwidth flash graphics might just make regular html pages zoom... And 

that mixing small flash graphics on regular html pages will allow the 

more normal and less time consuming html link navigation [especially for 

pages that are text oriented and informational].  


Does this rambling make sense to anyone, or am I just out in left field?


Jeff


Peterson Sales

Web Design and Marketing

410 Woodland Ave.

Grove City, PA 16127-1824

http://www.PetersonSales.net


Tel. 724-458-4160

Fax. 724-458-7169


ICQ 19112253



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