Flsh splash pages, redirects and SEO

[maff]

Hi!

Having a bit of a nightmare here.

I have a small and very short flash animation (which, as a newbie, I spent ages doing). The movie has a redirect to the main page for my site. However, I'm concerned that search angines do not spider flash so I'm trying to find a solution whereby if flash isn't detected then the page redirects to the main page of the site automatically without showing a useless jpeg/gif or "Click to enter" text which won't do well in search engine rankings.

I'd preferably like it to validate XHTML too!

Anyone got any zaney solutions?

I did try overlayering the movie over the site sontent and then having it disappear on completeion of the animation but it looks messy (page content often appears before the movie does and if you scroll down whilst the movie plays then you see half a contents page. Also, in IE, my drop down lists (<select>) appear through the movie!).

Thanks for any help in advance.

[al_h_5]

If your site has anything to do with a business (making money) Flash intros are strongly discouraged. That does not mean your site can't be fun. Feature your animation somewhere on your site ---- just not as an intro. If you give it some thought, it might lead to something even more creative.