You could probably do that site in Jquery equally as good with similar affects

Flash doesn't play "default" on Apple devices, you have to install 3rd party browsers/software in order for them to display it and with most people they don't realize that there's anything they need to do, and they will just see blank areas or placeholder spots that look totally goofy on your site pages. As nice as Flash "can be" it's not suggested to use anymore simply for these reasons. There are more and more Apple device users every day, and at least 80% of them will not realize they are missing anything when they don't have flash capabilities (in other words they are not web people, they are email checkers and little game app down loaders so they don't know anything is wrong).

I wouldn't suggest using flash for anything at all anymore. Better practice to do as G'Kar suggested in the last post and use something with jQuery instead.

Thanks for the feedback folks and thanks for the link Gunsmoke.

I don't have access to flash software, so using flash or not is a moot point at the moment :p Out of curiosity, somebody once told me that text in flash isn't readable by search engines, so you are better off using non-flash text to ensure better search hits. Is there any truth in that?

The current site ties in with our office stationary, so the site I am working on is essentially a clone of the old one, but with a few tweaks and no flash animation.

One aspect I would consider keeping is the animated splash/front page. How would I go about doing something like that in VSD?

True, but there is a way around. Read this page. http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development


You could I think easily recreate your splash page using a combination of VSD and the Animation Studio from CoffeeCup. Your page design is pretty basic but looks good and clean. Add a little animation using the Animation Studio and it'll still draw the eye to the page. Just don't go overboard (easily done!).

Had to laugh at Jo Anne's comment about Apple users its what I think as well.

Your site is very easy to replicate Zinc. Gunsmoke is the wizz with VSD ;-) so his way could be great Ive never used the program so I would do it in Jquery but many ways to get that done. If its the same layout and colours your firm wants then a lot of the job is done.

Gunsmoke is animation studio (I cant remember the exact name of it) good?

Well, it's not FLASH by any stretch, but yea, it's fun! You can animate text easily, move things around. It takes some work but that's par for the course. Then there is the 'Living Picture' part. I've not done one myself but have seen several examples that just look awesome for effect!. http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/creating-a-living-picture/
This is all part of the 'Animation Studio' program.

I truly don't see Animation Studio mimicking that front page to be honest. I know you can do some cool things with that program, but replacing an entirely flash page animation setup is beyond it's capabilities without the person using it having extremely good graphics capabilities to work with.

Basically that program works with a series of frames that create an animation similar to the old paper tablet method with a different image in a different pose on every corner of the page type setup. yes you could probably attempt it, but you'd have to do some really good stuff with timing of every single animation image which would have to be every section separately. Menu items each their own image, everything pretty much it's own image and done in dozens of poses to create one part of it. Then you'd have to get the timing of every single image (every frame for every single image) so that it's done to the right timing so all things work together. I can see something like this taking a very long time (weeks to months, most likely months) to create.

You would be better off looking into some java-script or jQuery setups and losing the full animated page system and just animate portions of it. Just my opinion of course, which doesn't mount to "a hill of beans" hahaha, but thought I'd chime in that it would be a really extreme amount of work to try to do that in Animation Studio.

Okay, I for one know there is more than one way to 'skin a cat'. Figuratively of course! But, not feeling to well this week I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this. But, here is a quick example using Animation Studio. You would have to add your menu and other graphics after the fact, or as part of the animation. I created this as a one-time animated gif. You could of course do a lot more but I'm on some pretty serious drugs right now. Anyway, have a look, just as an example... http://gunsmoke.me/test13

This is a.good thread I like to see what others think to the same solution. Most important though is Gunsmoke is your health. Any more on a definite diagnosis?

Not really. They are weening me off some of the drugs, which brings back the pain but I think they are trying to track the cause of the pain and while it's masked I guess they can't. Just gonna be one of those long long weeks . . .