I just hate to navigate flash abusing sites (like the ones linked on this post), too much animation, loading times, custom navigations….

100% flash sites bring lots of usability problems and that really shouldn’t happen. Web users want to find what they want in 5 seconds, they don’t want to play games!

In November of 2007 I encountered MooTools and fell in love, though I have recently transitioned to JQuery. There are still things that I can’t do, which can only be done in Flash. One is that I can’t take an image, rotate it 20 degrees and dropshadow it, and create a random stack of such rotated images with perfect dropshadowing.

The closest I can come to that is a JQuery dropshadow plugin renders a gradient-opacity shading beneath layers, and with the magic of .png or .gif transparency it indeed looks like real drop shadow – but of course doing this with a big png costs major bandwidth whereas Flash can do it with a fraction of the download time.

As a flash developer/designer, I tell people there are some projects that flash works and some that don’t . But when it comes to a better user experience (on a sites where users will spent more time), flash is best.

¡ viva la flash!

But I would like to know how many “Flash-haters” turn on the TV “just to get the information they need? If such a scenario where the case the only viable channel would be CNN.

The web is unanimously being crowned as the future of communication, entertainment, and marketing. While XHTML should be the sole choice for a lot of content on the web, for designers wishing to entertain their web audience, boost their brand image, or communicate their message with the greatest degree of impact, relying solely on Flash makes perfectly logical sense. This is especially true for sites that have more visual and audio content than it does text.

With the pervasiveness of Broadband load times are becoming more of a none issue than it was in times past, and for those looking to be entertained it can be interesting seeing the various creative preloaders. After all, how many of us complain when we have to sit through a couple of minutes of commercials before we can see the rest of our favorite sitcom or drama on television?

I can’t say I’ve ever been one for Flash websites either, but I do like the Oasim site. There’s a beauty in its simplicity. Though it is annoying sometimes to wait for the load. As you stated, many similar things can be done without Flash that are more lightweight, which is top priority for web design in my book.

@Narek: Check out online resources, pick up a few books, and tinker. Many people (including me) are self-taught in CSS and I think the best way to learn is just play around with it after learning a few basics.

http://w3schools.com/css/default.asp is a good tutorial site

http://codex.wordpress.org/CSS talks specifically about using CSS with WordPress if that is your interest. It also points you to some good resources as well.