To Flash or not to Flash

OK, I must admit I am indifferent when it comes to web design using Flash.   I am definitely not a fan of the intro movies and always choose to skip them, but a bit of flash here and there for navigation does not seem too intrusive in website design.  Issue is there are users out there who will see flash on a site and will leave immediately.

A short story, weinitially had some flash animation on the SpartanSoft site and thought from an aesthetic viewpoint it looked interesting…  well to make a long story short, we submitted our site to numerous web site critique sites and 50% of the reviewers refused to even acknowledge the website when they saw the flash animation.. long story short avoid flash, it tends to annoy. 

There are exceptions, for example if you are designing/developing a website for a game or artistic entity the targeted users may actually enjoy and appreciate the multi-media aspects Flash brings to the table.