Questions about Swish Splash Page

[mike breck]

A friend asked me to make a Splash intro page for his website.

I've never used Flash before but I'm having great fun.

I've used Swish Lite 1.52 to create a fade in logo and some text effects which finalize with an "Enter" link to his first page.

Some questions.

1. A visitor will still need the Flash plugin to view the Splash screen because Swish exports it as a Flash file - yes?

2. To make the Splash page the first page viewed when hitting the site, I have made the HTML page for the Splash "index.htm" and the renamed the original index page to Welcome.htm (or whatever).
Is this the usual procedure when using a Splash page or is there another way?

3. To cater for repeat visitors and visitors that don't have the Flash Plugin, I have put a link at the bottom of the Splash "index.htm" allowing them to skip the movie. Not great if they don't have Flash because all they get is a navy blue page with a link at the bottom.
Is there a better way to cater for viewers that don't have the Flash plugin?

Any views or opinions welcome.

Mike

[shecky981]

1. yes

2. that is correct. browsers always look for 'index.html' or sometimes 'default.html' as the 1st page in a directory they go to.

3. If you use Dreamweaver and drop in a flash movie, it automatically creates the HTML and javascroipt around the embed tag the moive is in to detectd if the flash plugin is installed. if it is not, it offers the guest an option to install the plugin. if you are not using dreamweaver, you should hunt for the surrounding code at some sites like Flashkit or Kirupa

[mike breck]

Thanks shecky981.

I have Frontpage 2002, so I'll experiment and see what sort of job that does.

If it ain't to my liking, then I'll find, cut, and paste some Javascript as you suggested.

[shecky981]

frontpage.

:::::::::hurls::::::::::::

its a shame. sorry, but, everytime i see people using frontpage it kinda makes me hurl. pretty much the worst possible program ever made for WYSIWYG HTML.

[mike breck]

Yes, I know Dreamweaver is the best WYSIWYG program but I didn't want to shell out the mega bucks needed to buy it at this point in time.
Anyway using FP2002 will make me appreciate Dreamweaver even more when I finally buy it.
However, to purists, I'm sure any WYSIWYG program is a cop-out as we should be doing it all in pure HTML.

The real pain is the necessity of Frontpage Extensions on servers for certain features. How does Dreamweaver facilitate similar features that need server extensions in FP2002? I assume the server doesn't need "Dreamweaver extensions"?