Recently when I go to the home page, a pop-up for the Macro Media Flash Player comes up saying I need it to view the site properly. 1. I don't like to download programs to view web sites if at all possible. 2. I haven't downloaded it and I don't seem to have a problem viewing the site. Why is it there and is there a good reason to download it?

The ads at the top (which you probably don't see now) are flash animations. The site doesn't need flash to run, but the flash animated ads support the site and keep it free to use.

Yeah, I hate heavy flash animated sites and sites that only use flash. I don't visit those sites often but once in a while I need info. So I use IE for those sites... and anything else that requires activex, java, whatever. On the other hand, for clean surfing with no extras i use Mozilla fine tuned to block everything but the stuff I want to see.

Quanto is right. It's to display a couple of banner ads. One for Hardie Truesdale Photography, and the other for The Town Tinker, which has a (inner) tubing operation on the Esopus up in Kingston. The flash overhead is pretty low. The ads are small.

In the near future, though, some of the site content will do illustrations in flash. Again though, we're not every going to be pushing the envelope of web techologies. We try to use things that are widely distributed and not too complex for the majority of users. Sorry for the hassle.

-em

It's become worse in the past week. Used to be it just did it before I logged in and went to the Discussion area - now it does it periodically while I'm there too. I don't like to download things to my work machine. Guess it serves me right for breaking my promise not to post at the new job...

It should have become worse in the last day, when we put up a new (flash) ad for the upcoming Petzl event. You don't need the flash plug in to use the site, but it would be a good idea if you want to be kept abreast of events, giveaways and whatnot.

-em