This bums me out for several reasons. First of all, I'd love to think that someone might actually READ my site before contacting me to do some work for them. While I know that's not always the case, and someone might be so incredibly captivated with just the text on my home page that they have to email me that very minute, I would at least hope someone I count as a good friend would have read that far. But no. Getting your friends to read your site is like herding cats.

The continuing requests for Flash sites also seem to go against the prevailing wisdom that no one wants it any more. I see numerous articles from web gurus of different stripes that demand has gone way down, that people have gotten smart to what a waste of bandwidth it can be...This is one of my favorites, from web content guru Gerry McGovern in Graphic design plays a minor role on the Web (October 24, 2005):

Have you noticed the demise of the Flash intro? A couple of years ago, they were everywhere. I have asked thousands of people in some 35 countries what they do when they see a Flash intro. "Skip intro" is the universal reply.

A Flash intro is a fourth-rate attempt at a TV ad by people who won't get a chance to design real TV ads. They were invented by graphic designers desperate to turn the Web into TV, and who wanted to look cool and win design awards.

Flash bashing is only a small part of the article...most of it is solid observation about useful, task-based sites. Where you can get things done. With intuitive navigation. Very few bells and whistles...solid and functional. Meeting real needs.

Of course, pretty and functional are always better than minimalist and functional to me...but I so hope that eye candy for eye candy's sake really is going away. And I hope that that idea sinks down to the average small business person in the next year or so.

Flash, Gerry McGovern, flash is bad