Flash vs. Animated GIF for web page

Question

I recently bought a flash template which looked really cool.
However after realizing I was in over my head and reading numerous
posts on Flash sites I am thinking that I should scrap the Flash
altogether. It is an awesome utility but for what I need I am
thinking an animated gif would do better. One concern is that I
don't want a prompt asking people that go to my website to download
an ActiveX control. I know that annoys me so I want to circumvent
it.
What is the general consensus on when to use Flash and when
to use an animated GIF?
Is an animated GIF the best alternative or is there something
else that makes more sense?
On my homepage I would like a GIF to loop continuously in the
background and perhaps have another animated GIF on top of it that
runs once then stops. Is this easily do-able? Is there a way to get
the anim GIF to download fully before it runs and perhaps show a
still of the GIF as a placeholder until the anim GIF is ready?
Any responses would be greatly appreciated.
Patrick
p.s. I posted this message to the Flash group then realized
it is more appropriate here

Answer 1

Just some thoughts on the subject...
Some people disable Flash, in their browser. Also, some
people use browsers that are not up-to-date and their Flash, in
particular, may be out of date. OTOH, others, like me, set animated
GIFs to animate only twice or maybe even, not at all.
Considering all that, I typically use animated GIFs, unless
there is an abiding reason to use Flash. The reason is that in the
history of Flash, there have been several version changes, while
there has only been one version of animated GIFs. In other words,
with animated GIFs, I don't have to worry if my visitor's browser
is up-to-date or not.
Since most of my clients are heavily dependent upon their web
site for income, my rule of thumb is, to try not to use any
technology that would limit the number of visitors who can view the
site, without any problems. After all, would you want to tell even
10% of your potential customers to
"Go away until your browser is up to date"? Think about
it...
That means avoiding, whenever reasonable, Flash, Java and
other plugins. For example, I used to use JavaScript for drop-down
menus. But now, I do the entire thing with CSS.
If your site is offering a product that everyone already
knows about and
already wants, then you can expect your visitors to take
that extra step (such as turning on JavaScript or downloading the
latest version of Flash) in order to use those features. In other
words, Microsoft and Fox News can expect you to have an up-to-date
browser, with all of the features enabled.
But, if you are trying to sell people on a new product that
they know nothing about, you can't afford to drive away even 1% of
your visitors. After all, that 1% might contain the purchasing
manager for a large corporation that might have bought thousands of
units of your product, had he been able to view your site.
On another related subject, there is one important note about
continuous animated GIFs. It's a good idea to make the first and
last frame the same, with the last frame set to just 1/100 of a
second. Those frames should also be the most image in the
animation. That way, if the visitor has animations disabled, he
sees the first frame and that's all. On the other hand, if the
visitor is like me and has animations set to one or two cycles,
then when the animation stops, it is on the last frame - not the
first. If your last frame is the same as the first, then the
animation stops on your most important frame.
That 1/100 of a second won't make any difference in your
animation, but adding that extra frame at the end of the animation
insures that regardless of what limits the visitor may have placed
on animations, they will always see your most important frame.
As for preloading the GIFs, you can do it with JavaScript.
Just remember that, in that case, you are depending upon the
visitor having JavaScript enabled.
One other option that may help with some browsers is to place
the animated GIF inside a <DIV> of the exact same size as the
image and then set the background of the <DIV> to a static
version of the foreground GIF.
I hope that this helps.