Flash has gained immense web popularity because it provides a convenient way to let web sites include interactive and animated movies, which could not have been possible otherwise. In the beginning, Flash made its mark because it provides advantages in two sectors; animated banner ads and Flash intros. Web designers considered Flash to be the latest, and that having Flash projected them as better designers.

Have you ever seen a scary movie from the 1950’s, complete with the most pathetic special effects ever created? You know the ones that I’m talking about, they have flying saucers from outer space that were crafted by gluing a camera lens cap to fishing line and dangling it in front of the movie camera. Now imagine the exact same movie made with today’s computer generated images and other special effects. That’s pretty much the difference between a plain introduction web page using basic HTML and a Flash intro.

In the simplest terms available, having a Flash intro to your website is popular because it’s not boring. If you had never seen a Flash intro, you would be completely “Wowed!” by it. If all you had ever seen was a Flash intro, and saw a plain HTML intro, you might not laugh at it (like you’d probably chuckle at the effects of a 1950’s sci-fi movie), but you might not frequent that site as often as you would a site with the latest Flash software. Why not? Because it’s just not as entertaining (or as much fun), that’s why!

Another disadvantage is that your homepage takes much more time to load when you use Flash intros. When you create a Flash intro, it surely has raster graphics, which increase the file size of the .swf file leading to a greater overall time to fully load your homepage. Now it would be too much to expect your time conscious visitor to keep waiting while your Flash intro gets loaded and then again go on to read your animated sales pitches. You know very well that had you been in the shoes of your visitor you would have just clicked out instead of waiting.

Embedding music and sound files in Flash intro movies increases their file sizes again leading to greater download time. Moreover, not every visitor is a music lover and even if he is, he may not like music forced upon him instead of being able to listen to what he prefers. However, the biggest disadvantage of using a Flash intro is difficulty in being picked up by search engines, which cannot index text embedded in movies. It is also wrong to suppose that placing keywords in Meta tags or within HTML comment tags is going to overcome this problem as even an advanced search engine like Google faces problems indexing text and following links created in Flash movies.

Main advantages of flash intro templates are- it adds the element of interest, better communication, addition of flash animation loading bar, music through flash with volume control button. To be on safer side you can also install plugin option for flash.