ODP and Flash Intro Sites

I wouldn't worry too much about editors reluctant to review sites using Flash when talking about Visual Arts, including Photography, or Design related categories, many sites in these areas use Flash. We understand it's part of the 'visual experience' which is probably more important here than elsewhere, although we as editors are more interested in content than site design, and aware of potential security issues.

Just speaking for myself here, 'skip intro', reasonable loading times even for those not having broadband connections, and a HTML version should be a basic courtesy to visitors.

More about Internet Infector Security

This must-read is just in, by a big-name IT journalist: "Internet Explorer Is Too Dangerous to Keep Using."

The problem: having merely recently visited any one of many reputable sites (which ones? WE DON'T KNOW!) will mean any personal passwords, credit cards, or other information stored on your computer, or typed on its keyboard to be stolen by hackers (presumably in Russia). There is currently neither a way to detect this, or a patch to fix it. Since you don't know what websites were affected (except that all of them were running on Microsoft IIS), you have no way of even estimating your exposure.

The only solution for death-or-glory permanent-slaves-of-the-IE is "If you must run IE, ... you can disable all active scripting and ActiveX on all IE zones." This will, of course, disable Flash.

More rational victims of IE (like the author) will have been moving to other browsers. Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera all get high ratings from users, few rapes by hackers, and good scores for functionality and performance.

Read the article at http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1617931,00.asp . If you're not convinced, read it again. (In fact, read it over and over until you're positively terrified.)

Flash may be bad for google

Flash web sites are seldom ranked in robot based search engines. Also in india, it is irritating to have a flash intro because of the internet speed. I have seen lots of good flash sites in DMOZ

See this site : david-carter.com/websites/flash.htm
they say flash will damage a website !

krishnadasan design
New Delhi, India

Clarification

Perhaps I'm being dense but it seems to me the original question was never fully addressed. And as I'm about to be in the same boat, I'd really like to be certain of the answer.

I understand all the concerns regarding the use of Flash, and I appreciate the importance of "skip intro" links and other user-friendliness considerations, but bottom line... is it acceptable to submit, say, www.abcdefg.com/index.html if the page that comes up consists of nothing more than a Flash animation -- with a "skip intro" link, naturally -- that, upon completing or skipping, redirects to store.abcdefg.com?

To put it another way, does a Flash animation in itself constitute enough content to make www.abcdefg.com/index.html more than just a redirect page?

Obviously, I'd prefer to submit the more elegant "www" domain name if possible, but I want to be sure I'm abiding by your rules.

We don't look at 1 page for enough unique content. We only look at complete sites. As the flash intro is part of the site we normaly would list it and not the next page it redirects to. Preferably we list a site as www.sitename.com (without index.htm or whatever is used as first page).

Okay...well...I hate to belabor this point, especially since I like that answer, but I have to say I'm a little confused. The rule is:

Do not submit any site with an address that redirects to another address.

Click to expand...

Yet you seem to be saying it's acceptable for me to submit www.sitename.com, even if all the content -- except for one Flash intro page at www.sitename.com/index.html -- is at store.sitename.com.

Again, I'm perfectly happy if that's correct; it just seems to go completely against my understanding of the rule.

It's within the same domain. We understand that content changes often on sites and that webmasters use different means of ensuring users get there.

We want to use the shortest address that works for a domain.

If http://www.domainname.com/ redirects to http://www.domainname.com/content/v5/default.html , that's okay. We'll list the short version of the URL.

If, however, http://www.domain.com/ redirected to http://www.spammy-marketing-garbage.com/ then we wouldn't want to list http://www.domain.com/ at all. We'd list the destination. (Assuming it was listable, of course.)

That's what the redirect rule is talking about.