Creating a Flash Website

[snowboardgirl11]

Does anyone have any good suggestions on a good software/site to build your own flash website? Thanks!

[Gobae]

No such thing exists. Use XHTML/CSS.

Just say no to flash websites. It's an animation tool not a website creator. Just because you can use Flash doesn't mean you should.

[dcclark]

Flash is a very bad choice to be your main website. You can use flash to enhance an XHTML/CSS website. But, if all you use is flash, you'll run into trouble:

- Users without flash, or with older versions, are automatically excluded (meaning, you lose potential customers!)
- Google and other search engines can't index your website, so you lose all-important search engine hits.
- Users on slow connections (much of the world still uses dialup!) will take forever to get your site, if anything. They'll probably leave.

So, go with good old HTML!

[snowboardgirl11]

Yes, I have an HTML site right now for the reasons that you stated, and was debating changing to Flash, as there are some features I really like about it. I've decided to keep my site and just do slideshow inserts. Hopefully that will help me to combine both! And living in rural New Enlgand, we definitely have a slow internet problem, so I don't want to discourage customers! Thanks for the input.

[goandcheck]

I don't recommend you to create a Flash website if you don't know about Flash... Flash is not that simple and not that useful but if you still want what you need is Adobe Flash, have fun...

[Free]

What they said... Flash websites can be built very well and be search engine / accessibility friendly. However even pros struggle with this side of it, I think it's a safe bet that if you don't know what program to use to build it in, you wont be able to build it properly.

What do you actually want flash for? A gallery? AJAX can be used to create awesome slide shows and / or galleries using valid standards compliant xhtml & css.

Check out:

JonDesign's (**********) SmoothGallery 2.0: Improved Mootools Mojo for Images | What is it ?
and
Slimbox, the ultimate lightweight Lightbox clone · digitalia.be

There are heaps more, just look up Mootools or Prototype libraries and what people are doing with them.

HTH
Free

[snowboardgirl11]

Thanks for the advice and links. I have website using HTML now, and I'm just interested in learning to use Flash properly and creating some shows that I can use for my website. I had seen some Flash websites advertised, that looked nice and caught my interest, but I figured they would probably not be a good idea. I was wondering what ya'll thought. Well, I will dig into learning Flash. What else would I do in my spare time? lol

[dhart]

I just switched from a Flash landing page to php, and the reason for it was that I couldn't show my website on my iPhone! BIG disasvantage. So, my wonderful DH fixed it for me. Now, my website, and portfolio is available on my iPhone. I also have the actual photos on the phone, but not being able to pull up my site was pretty huge.

[Gobae]

Yes, a lot of people didn't put much stock in mobile devices changing how we view the web. But between the Iphone and the Blackberry it's becoming vastly more common for people to want to see your site while mobile, and they don't handle Flash well.

Originally Posted by dhart

I just switched from a Flash landing page to php, and the reason for it was that I couldn't show my website on my iPhone! BIG disasvantage. So, my wonderful DH fixed it for me. Now, my website, and portfolio is available on my iPhone. I also have the actual photos on the phone, but not being able to pull up my site was pretty huge.