Splash page for choosing language and fast load, still bad?

Flash site index loads +200 kb...

[silverbytes]

A site has index.htm with a 200+ kb flash.
2 languages... I thought a splash page would help fast loading and let user choose it's language. But everybody complains about it...
The flash has options for choosing language itself... opinions?

[bird]

Um, did I really see "fast loading" and "200+ kb" in the same paragraph there? ;)

[silverbytes]

No, I mean 200 kb is not fast.
Thus: should I use a 2 kb splash page as excuse for letting set language to user but really for fast loading? (then you wait the 200 kb, which is not much for a whole flash site)...
Opinions?

[moltar]

In my opinion 200kb is a lot even for cable user. Lets put it this way - for a modem user it would take around 1 minute to load the whole site. Thats pretty bad!

Here is a good article for you to read:
[useit.com...]

[silverbytes]

In my opinion 200 kb is nothing for a whole site, animated, etc etc. I do prefer to wait once and then have a nice time inside a good website, instead of waiting for every single click I do in html sites....
But the point is: are splash pages always hated?

[claus]

Imho, splash pages are very bad in one respect: They are not what the user came for. Rather, they are some odd construct that stands between the user and what he/she really would like to see.

That said, i think it's a very good idea to make a 2K page that will display instantly instead of forcing the user into a 200K+ download situation without a fair warning first.

If that's how the site works now, i'd say that it doesn't.

Anyway, be honest about it. On the splash page, tell the user that the real deal weighs 200K+ and that it will load faster because of the splash page. This would be nice.

/claus

<edit>This forum being search engine promotion and not design issues /usability:

Flash has never been a good idea in the context of search engines. There's simply no content that the spiders can eat - this implies that flash sites are rarely found in the serps (there's no "top of the" before serps)</edit>