I'm just wondering how you guys handle a situation when clients ask for flash work on a website. What do you tell them? What reasons do you give for avoiding the use of flash on a website? I know that jQuery can take care of a lot of interactivity that flash can do, but what to you tell a client that is dead set on having a flash intro or having crazy flash animations on the page?
I normally say "Flash into pages are terrible for SEO, they are also another page away from what your clients are looking for, you might think its a nice idea, but it is another thing that will irritate your clients"
Same goes for flash animations - there is no need, it looks pants, and anything you need doing is probably going to be more compatible with peoples browsers in Javascript.
Summery: "you might get off on these, and think they are good, but they arnt - and your clients wont think so either."
Obviously be a little more tactful, give examples of great business sites from best of web or something... notice they all pretty much don't use flash... especially intros...
The best bet is to figure out WHAT they want, now HOW they want it. Nobody (hopefully), just "wants Flash" generically. Gimme Flash! I don't care what it is, I just want it to be Flash! What they really want is something cool. Give them something cool, just don't use Flash.
Same goes for flash animations - there is no need, it looks pants, and anything you need doing is probably going to be more compatible with peoples browsers in Javascript.
Summery: "you might get off on these, and think they are good, but they arnt - and your clients wont think so either."
Obviously be a little more tactful, give examples of great business sites from best of web or something... notice they all pretty much don't use flash... especially intros...
Just about every beginning web developer colleague I had wanted to create JUST flash sites. "Just think of the exposure!"