I would avoid frames. It's very easy to screw up when building them and it's easy for search engine visitors to "come into" the wrong pane.

DHTML is great but you have to be very careful in how you use something like pop up menus. Most of the DHTML popup menus put the urls inside the javascript which search engines can't/won't crawl. In other words they dead end on the page they come into. very bad. One way around this is to always have a html link bar at the bottom of the page so there are "crawlable" links, or use CSS popup menus.

Most of what can be done in DHTML can be done exclusively with Cascading Style Sheets. CSS. Check out www.projectseven.com. They are wizards in using Dreamweaver and CSS.

Flash is very cool and is on a boat load of computers. I have found the learning curve for Flash is a bit daunting. To get started try using Swish. www.swishzone.com. It's an alternative pgm that writes flash files. Easier to learn and cheaper.

"Embedded verses external browser support?" I am assuming you are referring to external style sheets (css)? CSS is really cool. you set up rules for how your site will look write it to a text file and link all pages in your site to it. You want your default font for all your pages switched to Verdana? No problem, change one line in your external css and bam the whole site is up to date.

I believe your site was written with Frontpage. It has a FP look to it. Take a little more time and learn Dreamweaver MX 2004. It is an amazing pgm and is worth the effort. DW has extensions (plugins) that you can buy or download for free. Very similar to Vegas Scripts. This alone dwarfs FP. Also start using Fireworks MX 2004 for your web graphics. Together DW & FW are a killer combo.

Here is a site I built using FW & DW www.affinityav.com (has been having some DNS probs. lately) or check out www.affinityrecycling.com

Jack

If you're looking for some kind of animation that's accessible to viewers without having to download a browser plug-in, you could always just use a big animated GIF. I made one for my site using Premiere and an old Boris FX 3.55 effect. Check it out at:
www.prolefeedstudios.com

Does Vegas export animated GIFs, by the way? I forget....

I would stay away from heavy graphic and some funcy stuff on index page. The front page should load fast even for dialup( believe or not-most people use dialup).Simple html page should work for index. The thesub pages can have heavy graphic.

It's funny....a few years ago, frames & flash were all the rage. Remember the first time you saw an animated GIF?

Billy, I've been to your site a few times. It ain't sexy by any means, but it gets the job done. I don't go there to look at pictures. I go there to learn.

Whatever you decide to do is up to you -- just don't mess with the actual content ; )

For sure my site ain't sexy, especially with my mug on it. ;-)

Its kind of funny, originally I had planned to do just 2-3 tutorials, then that turned into 5, 10, 15, and I just keep running out of room. So I just literally threw the pages up without regard to order or trying to really make them pretty looking or anything.

Now that I got ideas for a bunch more tutorials and other things I'm just at a point that I got to kind of organize things a little and move it too, since the nickle and dime approach getting 10 more MB every so often isn't very practical.

I agree. I believe in KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

If I go to a site that requires any high bandwidth to present its basic content, I usually just go somewhere else. In my opinion, anything that needs even moderate bandwidth should be a voluntary click on the site. Frames are not as critical, but I don't see any need for them usually. KISS again.