I'm starting a new business and am thinking of doing the entire site in Flash. Any words of advice?

I have Flash Professional MX 2004.

I'd say that you need to be careful about doing something like this. Flash websites, unless you really know what you are doing, are not spiderable by content scrapers like Google, and that's a huge downfall if you're going to be depending, at all, on search engine traffic.

In addition, while most people have the Flash plugin installed, not everyone wants to wait for a flash site to load before they can view the service or content provided.

I thought the following was a good view on the subject: Flash Site Decision Chart

It really depends on what type of business you are starting. If it is an art or photography business, a flash site can be justified. If it is not an artistic business, I would advise against a flash site.

Either direction your business goes, you can always add flash elements to your html site to dress it up. Like nickohrn mentioned, there are a lot of downsides to a full Flash site.

How can you resolve the problem that
not everyone wants to wait for a flash site loading.

Originally Posted by imhr

How can you resolve the problem that
not everyone wants to wait for a flash site loading.

To resolve that, simply don't create a flash site, but rather a static site.

Any words of advice

Yep.



Don't!

Do not make complete flash site you can go with header but wont advise you to go with complete flash site

well... you can do it but you must publish it without SEO... flash makes a lot of things, if you know how to use it

cheers!

I was thinking of building a site based on heavily nested tables, spacer gifs, flash, and frames. Let's hear a resounding chorus of approval from webmaster talk! (*crickets*) hmm...