What are my options using Flash?

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Hi all. Feeling a bit frustrated here… I just spent a good portion of my weekend setting something up using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (which I don’t know!) only to find out that if the user turns off JavaScript, my pretty solution goes to heck! :mad:

What I’d like to do…

  • Create a “slide-show” on my Home Page
  • Slides should automatically change like flipping through a presentation
  • There should be tabs at the bottom, so a user can go back to any slide
  • There should be a way to “pause” the presentation

Here is what I came up with using JavaScript…

[INDENT]Tabbed jQuery slideshow
[/INDENT]

The purpose of my slide-show is to communicate important things to customers (e.g. Sales Info, Upcoming Events, Notices, etc.)

Chances are the message will just be text, however I might want to add graphics or pictures to spice it up. (Maybe this doesn’t matter, since I guess everything with Flash is an “image”, right?)

Questions:

1.) Can this be accomplished using Flash?

2.) What do I need to create something similar to the above sample link?

3.) How difficult would it be to learn how to do this?

4.) Is there a free, open-source Flash alternative? (I hear that Adobe Flash is quite expensive, and I don’t have the $$$ to buy anything any time soon.)

5.) What is the best way to get the end-effect that I’m seeking, with the greatest compatibility? (If it is easy to break like my JavaScript attempt, then it probably isn’t such a great solution.)

Thanks,

Debbie

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You could certainly do an alternative slideshow in flash - however I’d imagine that users that have actively disabled javascript would likely be the same type of user likely to disable flash too. The amount of people with disabled javascript is very low, and they have made the choice to opt out of interactive content, so I would display some static imagery for them but wouldn’t expend too much effort worrying about them.