USABILITY ISSUES WITH FLASH

Flash Introductions on index pages

A large percentage of people are very impressed with fancy flash image introductions on website home pages.
These are usually a bad idea from the point of view of usability, as well as being unnecessarily expensive in both monetary cost and code load, which of course slows page-load.
I do not usually make any flash introductions or moving images unless for good reason, and then the flash is placed such that if it is not displayed in the browser, there is no bad effect on the look of the site.
Read what an acknowledged expert in the field of website usability, Jakob Nielsen, has to say on the subject, and it is plenty..
Basically, the message is that if you are trying to sell something or get a message across from your website ( what other reason would you have a website for? ), then you don't want to distract visitors with flash or moving images.

Take note that an ever-increasing percentage of searches are being made on devices which cannot handle flash, at least not yet. These devices include “Macintosh/Apple” devices, which are selling like hot cakes these days, and most mobile phones, which simply do not have the cpu capacity to handle flash yet.