Questions about Flash

[Liz]

I know very little about Flash, but I'm wondering if there's a way I can let users enable it on my Web site with the click of a button. My template design has old-fashioned GIF buttons. I'd like to put an option somewhere in all the pages where if the user clicked it, the site would turn from plain GIF buttons to Flash. But the default would be the plain GIF. Is that possible? If yes, which version of Flash would let me do that?

Would using Flash like this interfere at all with my Web site being indexed by search engines? I figure the answer should be no.

And if I wanted to create a customized RealPlayer skin that matches my Web site, would I use Flash for that, or something else?

Thanks!

[Blue Cat Buxton]

You could do this with javascript to detect a flash plug in and direct the user accordingly, or use cookies to set the users preffered option

[Uzzz]

or u can just do a flash and non-flash version of your site...but i doubt that helps heh.

[vahsi000]

I would definitely go with making 2 website, one with flash and one with plain gif buttons. All you need to do is make a splash screen with 2 links on it, one going to the plain website the other going to the flash website. Also write a note beneath these links telling them where each link will take them and it might be a good idea to put a link to macromedia so they could download the player if the wanted to.

[Westech]

Or you could use a server-side language like php or asp to store the user's preference in a database or cookie. You could then output the correct html to either display the gif images or embed the Flash based on the user's preference.