Lol... you hit some some very ethical issues of web experience. There's a lot in the mix at work here, and if you ask me, the extremist point of view on anything is a very narrow mindset. People say that Flash is inappropriate because it has limited content accessability. People say that JavaScript is bad because it can break your site if the user doesn't have JS enabled. People say that CSS is less reliable than table designs. In the end, that's all a load of crap because those are dumb blanket statements about specific scenarios. This all comes down to one underlying factor: know your audience and tailor your experience to them. So, no... Flash doesn't have the best accessibility for seachability and indexing. You can create a dump of embedded Flash text content into the HTML page that displays it, but that's not very useful. If searchability, accessibility, and indexing are key priorities, then you should be smart enough to know that Flash isn't the way to go. I had a boss once who wasn't that smart and wanted to do the company's website entirely within Flash despite my stern opposition given that Flash didn't meet our goals. He had me do it anyway, and within three months of the site launching he had me rebuild it all again in CSS because – go figure – it wasn't hitting his demographic. I quit shortly there after due to being fed up with stupid people. So was Flash bad? No, it just wasn't appropriate for a company promoting sales to the mature (50+) audience. However, is that really a factor if you're making a video game website? Do you think a 20-something world of warcraft addict is going to be looking at the blizzard website with a screen reader? Knowing your product and the expectation of your target audience is the key to creating appropriate user experiences from both a technology and accessibility standpoint. So, saying that Flash is the bane of the Internet is crap. In most scenarios I promote hybrid designs driven by HTML / CSS for content delivery, then Flash infusion (with degradation for users without Flash) to add some rich media experience to the site. Here's a site that I did the Flash for that I really like the overall outcome of... http://tmgstrategies.com/. While the content is pretty sterile, the site is jazzed up with a snazzy Flash billboard (if I don't say so myself :D). This is the kind of balance I personally think is most effective for about 75% of scenarios. Then you have the shift to the two extremes of more sterile (For say, the medicade website), or more Flashy (the the younger, hipper, or more media-saavy audience). Also, don't scratch multimedia off your list because Flash isn't involved. I'm currently making mods to this: http://www.wnyc.org/slideshows2/bhutan/. That's entirely JavaScript with the exception of the Flash needed for the audio player. This kind of non-Flash multimedia is pretty popular, so JavaScript is a great skill to be strong in... don't worry, you'll get it. I've never had a formal day of JS training in my life, I just sat down one day and started writing it when I realized that it's incredibly similar to ActionScript.

BTW: Congrats on the interview! Bust of luck, I took a quick look at their website. Looks like a good kind of place to get your feet wet. This is a one-year internship in lieu of a college term, or would you be a full-blown employee? Either way, good luck! Does this mean that we'll have to now set up a CSS thread for "educational discussion"?

Yeah, to a certain extent thats what I said in the interview... I work out what I want to do first... THEN work out what the best method is to do it. Yep its like a one year internship. Been handing out my CV to various local design companies. Eyekiller does seem a nice company, and I would learn a heck of a lot about doing proper web design there, i.e. the real world stuff, not the playful college stuff :D However... I don't know that I want to work there for my internship to be honest. Its the sort of company that would be great for a first job when I qualify, but for my internship I think i'd rather go to a multi-disciplinary design company rather than a purely web design one, simply because I want to get as broad an experience in as many aspects of design as I can while still in college, so that if I do decide to focus purely on web design in the future, at least then I have an element of knowledge about typography, print design, motion graphics, etc. that can hopefully influence my work in interesting ways. We'll see :D

Dont usually see something like this so well executed (in my opinion) http://www.minuit.co.nz/

That site is friggin' nuts... Thanks for the link! One thing though, I still have no idea what it's for. Is that a band's website? Or was it an entire music network?

I dont have a clue! :D

It was made by these guys... http://www.resn.co.nz/ Worth checking out, theyve made some pretty engaging sites

Yikes... I can't say that I'm a big fan of their company website. That demo reel hover with the full-screen flashing images is a bit much. Clearly they do know what they're doing with the medium though; so this just demonstrates how design tastes differ.

I really liked that office-style site they've done... the pen-clicking logo is inspired! I agree their main site is a bit messy and distracting for my liking, though iv seen some examples of sites where they've used full-screen images really well, so the site really shows off the work and the navigation isnt obstructive or distracting. Case in point... http://filippasmedhagensund.com/# Beautiful in its simplicity. :D

By the way, that TMG site you showed me... it has a flash header within the CSS layout yes? How come the Flash doesnt have a stupid 'click to activate' border on it?

LOL... that stupid active-run content thing in IE where you have to click the movie once to activate it? I'd forgotten that exists! It's been a while since I've encountered it. We now have extremely standard workflows in place to circumvent it. The defacto-standard is to just use one of the standard SWF embedding JavaScript components that are available for free online. The original two pioneers were UFO (Unified Flash Object) and SWFFix, but within the last year the developers of each tool put aside their differences and decided to mate, which has yielded the collective brain-child called "swfobject". So, you just link one of those scripts into your page and run its config script to have it write embed code into the page with all the browser settings configured to eliminate any unwanted effects.

http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/index.html Really simple and really beautiful. Uses Flash to add little details that just lift the site and make the experience special. The art is pretty cool too!

Speaking of Flash Experiments... Me and my Bro were tasked recently with the simple job of making some kind of graphic or poster for a Paintball Game our Dad was planning to have with his co-workers... Well we decided to put our all into it and... Saying we got carried away would be a vast understatement; as this 13 MB flash file shows: http://ww2.rainbowschools.ca/~daousta/paintballad.html Yes, we did take that WELL beyond where it should have gone. Anyway, using Adobe After Effects and the .tif format (instead of jpg), we were able to solve my usual problem of REALLY bad imported media. All in all this flash animation taught me quite a bit about the use of external applications in the creation of a flash video, as well as being one of the best waste of my time ever.

Yeh I know there isnt anything terribly original in that site, but it does it all rather well I think, even the way the buttons kind of affect each other... Shofixti, what difference did the tif format make? Did it render better in Flash or something?