As its popularity has spread on the Internet, so too have certain misconceptions that I hope to either clarify or outright dispel with this article. Flash animations are nothing more than eye candy, and ugly besides. No business serious about making money uses Flash on their site. You need to go through a long download process to get the Flash runtime files. Anyone can build a flash animation it's easy.
Flash animations are too slow and take too long to download.
With all myth-conceptions, there is a grain of truth here, IF the flash developer is not careful and considerate about bandwidth and streaming issues. As a streaming technology, Flash can begin displaying an animation the moment it has downloaded enough relevant content. In other words, I can create a flash movie that begins to tell its story within a second or two of streaming download, if I carefully limit myself to some initial text and simple graphics. Certain Flash movies may require some heavier actors to appear from the first frame. The trick then is to provide some sort of preloader, or 'opening act', which keeps the audience occupied while the main show loads in the background.