Flash was designed to load things fast, wasn't it? If it's slow, it's either a) Crapily designed, or b) designed for someone on a T1 connection in which case....it's badly designed!

I agree though, if it doesn't load fully in about 5 seconds, people get grumpy.

I'm still impressed with my little transparent gif or whatever drop-down menues. Royale did a crackin' job on those.

Thylo you have a good site. looks good, and its quick.
pinarello is a good site, but its **** on dial up.
PBK is a good site because its quick and stuff is easy to find.

Get the bloke to do the free work on something else not a flash intro even if it is a yank thing. buck the trend

this is my idea of a good "front page" of a website

https://www.lhthomson.com/bikes.htm

Simple, no ANNOYING flash crap, loads quick, is uncluttered, and the categories are spotted in 1 second

these aren't bad, neeva:

https://www.bontrager.com/index.php
https://www.eastonbike.com/

These are just a few that spring to mind

https://www.campagnolo.com/home.php

I worked in web development for over 5 years... Flash intro's are sooo 2001.
A great deal of people (myself included) won't wait for them to load... unless it's a design site.
The bail out button came about through Flash intros losing hits on sites. People were just hitting the back button and going elsewhere.
If yours is going to have a lot of images in it, it'll be on the slow side. You can only compress images so much before they start detracting from your site... I hope your bloke's not doing cheesy text effects as well.
Flash intros are really not very professional IMHO.

Quick change of topic, has anyone noticed how the rednecks come out of the woodwork whenever there's a thread on Asian manufacturing?

An imaginary conversation......

ABH - "Those Commies, they're not free like us. Nosirrreeee! If they were, they'd make quality stuff!"
THY - "Well, Commies were the first into space, developed nuclear capabilities, I'm sure they also invented a whole heap of stuff"
ABH - "Yeah, but in China, they have no freedom, so they have no quality control"
THY - "Huh?"
ABH - "And those bottom feeders like Walmart come in and -"
THY - "Okay, so you believe in the free market system I guess"
ABH - "Absolutely"
THY - "Great, so, where is the demand for these cheap products coming from?"
ABH - "Consumers?"
THY - "Right, so basically 'free' Americans"
ABH - "Basically, I guess"
THY - "Okay, so here you have Joe America on basic wage, no 401k, no health benefits because the government abolished them, no real plans to send his kids to Uni because he couldn't afford the 100 grand to send them there, and he wants a new gizmo"
ABH - "Err....okay"
THY - "He's 'free', so what's he going to buy? Walmart is a big successful company, epitome of American 'free market', they have the gizmo he wants and it's only 10 bucks! Sweet! I can still buy it an afford a sixpack of Miller"
ABH - "But Walmart just sells crap made by Commies!"
THY - "I'm sure they don't sell commie stuff. I mean, aren't you guys at war with all things Commie? I mean, those bastards are taking your jobs and lowering quality to boot!"
ABH - "Yeah, Taiwan on the other hand, they make quality stuff and aren't Commie, which is a bonus"
THY - "Well, we're getting a bit off track here, but don't you find it ironic that the once demonised 'red hordes' are now flavour of the month with the bastions of American freedom and free trade - the corporation - and that Americans are not only lapping it up but their demand for cheap commodities is on the rise?"
ABH - "Well, everyone likes a bargain. I just got these shoes for 50 bucks!
THY - "Sure, but that bargain just cost someone their job in the US factory that was just shut down, the waste from those shoes is now floating down the Yangse River, and the guy that lost his job in the US can't afford to reeducate himself cos it's going to cost him 50 grand, and he has no 401k or severance pay because he wouldn't have got employed in the first place if he didn't sign on as a temp. How 'free' do you feel? Not much freer than the Chinese girl making those shoes I bet, and to top it off, spend a day looking at where everything in your house is made. I'm guessing the majority of it is from guess where?"

etc., etc.

ok thy where is this thread?
*rolls up sleeves and grabs the left-wing labour economics journal article*

keep it simple I say
https://www.kleinbikes.com/us/home.html

Ok kiddies, any of you doing the Central Coast Century on Sunday ?

Thylo is channelling alanbikehouston

I've generally found Italian websites to be the worst.

Naw, Chinese websites are worse than Italian ones

Fark I'm an idiot. why did I bother writing that stupid diatribe?

What is this you speak of?

yes, 'ABH' is an unusual man, at least for a "cyclist".

Remember his 'work' on that "Genetics" thread? I posted some referenced stuff on the subtle physiological differences of people of West African descent, and he suggested it was falsified.

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...black+athletes

Seriously, every friggin I-taliano website I check out (yeah, mostly cycling related) have some stupid flash front page, then everything sitting behind it is almost unusable. Is Italy part of the Western world or not?

I laughed at the diatribe. ABH is a tool. His mother must have been turned into a ho and an opium addict by a Chinaman wearing a green boilersuit or something. I called him a running dog western capitalist imperialist once. It is actually possible to write on the interweb in a Chinese accent. Got a few laughs too!

ha!! Good!

Sut the fluck up you capitalist pigdog!

I saw a doco a week or so ago about Nokia doing 'checks' on it's subcontractors in China. You know who was the chief lieutenant at this factory? A freakin POM!

I tells ya, ya can't trust em....any of them.....poms...chinese................kiwis.......EVERYWHERE! AARRGGGHHHH!!!!

No way. The Pom is normally the shop steward.

Nice. Very nice.

Ha ha. ABH got pwn3d bigtime, as did our old friend Ben "EURO" "I don't play for West Coast" Cousins.

50km or 100km road thingy on Sunday May 21st.

Check out www.rotaryerina.org.au/cycle.htm

Someone wanna explain what pwn3d means (email me if the explanation is too much for BF).

And are you saying Ben Cousins is that dork Euro on BF? Or is this some obscure masculine reference we females have no hope of understanding?

pwn3d is 'owned'. It's 'owned' with typos and is mildly amusing (maybe not!).

The EURO saga is a long story, involving much detective work(I think 531Aussie played the role of Columbo ), many bannings and warnings from the mods and many deleted threads. Once upon a time there was a reasonable, mild mannered and likable poster from the UK known as Ben Cousins. Not the Weagle, some other non-entity . One day Ben stopped posting. People asked, 'where is that lovely boy Ben?' His posts were mysteriously deleted, only remaining as quoted remarks. Then one day, about 2 months later, some tool calling himself EURO appeared, insulting people and acting like a total dick. Some people managed to figure out that EURO was Ben Cousins, then all hell broke loose.

Now EURO has many fans and detractors. 55-rad is chief detractor, along with biker7. 55x11 all the way loves EURO. Personally, I think EURO's bike looks like a farmgate and is hilarious. He even has some other person pretending to be EURO (*EURO*), who appears to be at least as big a pain in the arse as the original. Who knows, they might be the same person.

To be fair, EURO is often right, but he is a knob IMO.

so I take it EURO is banned atm?
Why did he change? Just got sick of being nice? How did they figure out EURO is Ben Cousins?
So many questions.

No (and never has to my knowledge-though I think he's come close at times), no idea, no idea and no idea.

He has toned his schtick down of late (except for that looney patentcad) and is posting less - probably training with the weather improving in Europe and working.