FLASH vs DHTML

I have no particular axe to grind - I believe in using the proper tool for the job - I would not recommend a portal like Drupal for a simple blog, go with WordPress, duh - but I am increasingly seeing Flash widgets and even entire sites that in IMO could be better served with DHTML

I just finished PM on an artist's site - a very nice site, I think - with a bit of a story.

I was hired a couple of years ago to create a flip book of her work with a tellafriend in Flash - so I made it in Flash, although it could just as well have been handled with faster-loading DHTML. The producer wanted the tellafriend to send a flash file by email, and I don't like saying "impossible" but in this case I told him no flash, just a static image.

They came back to me recently for some updates to the artist's main site. Very simple updates, change a few images, change some text content nothing structural. The only problem was nobody knew where the fla was (not the project I worked on, the larger site).

Eventually I laid out $80 for the SoThink FLA extractor and it produced an editable fla that would not recompile back to the site. I had a few other people look at the pieces, the fla and a bunch of actionscript files, and it was finally determined that Humpty Dumpty would not go back together again, and the site needed to be rebuilt.

Along the way I met Arif in Hyderabad, India who has a company there named Anteriorsoft which specializes in Flash development (not so much design but complex programming projects) and I would really highly recommend Anteriorsoft for Flash development.

I became PM of a project to "recreate" the site with some new twists - the gallery images would load with XML, as well as the Contact/News content also with XML. I went through several rather minor revisions making sure the new site looks exactly like the old one, and functions the same, which is no mean feat when you are using different methods.

The final outcome is very nice, but I would challenge anyone to tell me why it has to be Flash - except that the original was in Flash - and not DHTML? Yes, there is an animation on the home page and one of the sketchbooks - heard of animated GIFs?

Some years ago, a creep on Craigslist asked me to create a Flash header for his company and I came up with a retro-sci-fi looking piece that could not easily be created any other way, using tweening. Of course the "client" disappeared and I was left holding the swf - but I am fond of it. I used images from the NASA site.

One of my pet peeves (and I have quite a few) is using Flash for menus that could just as easily be created and manged with DHTML. However the Unemployed Philosophers Guild site has a Flash menu that adds slightly whimsical animation I think would be difficult to create otherwise. (I did not create it, I consulted on "closing" a window.js constructed pseudo-window div that was being problematic, and I added an event listener to their marvelous ecard app that counts carriage returns to adjust the quote bubble accordingly - it previously only counted characters, but carriage returns were causing overflow)

I know I ramble and burble, but let's get back to the point: why use Flash when DHTML would do, load faster, be easier to change etc.?

Any Flash enthusiasts want to take up the gauntlet? - as I have shown, I respect and use Flash when appropriate (or the client specifies), but I am much more a DHTML kind of guy...

(Added later:)

(I have just moved these sites to a new server/host and resolving DNS issues - I think most are working except in http://netsperience.org/ directory but subdomains seem fine...)