If I really needed a long and drawn out flash presentation I would have to outsource it to someone with the right skills. And I can only imagine that would be if I wanted to build a full flash web site.

Mostly what I need, like many other people, are tiny flash movies that I place within an ordinary XHTML site. That way you get the benefits of free search engine traffic (because XHTML websites offer far more opportunities for search engine love than do, pure flash sites).

The product I love to use is called 3DFA. It is relatively cheap, and the interface has been improving over the years. It doesn’t take long to make a flash movie using the tools provided in 3DFA. The only disappointment is that the help is relatively terse.

That said, my advice is to spend an hour just trying to use the product.

Here is a page from a site I did for a client. The animation at the top is a flash animation made using 3DFA. The image slideshow in the bottom right, in case you want to know was achieved using this product.

Note that the curved edge to the slideshow animation was achieved by using 3DFA to create a flash mask for the slideshow.