Is there anything in particular I should look for with a host if I am going to have Flash animations on my site?

thanky

I doubt it.. you don't need a special host for 'animated GIFs' either :D I have never seen any restrictions on Flash files.

flash movies, animations and lots of graphics eat up lots of bandwidth so you going have to look for a host with good amount of bandwidth

There should be nothing in the way if you pay for hosting, but some of the free hosts use cgi scripts that block flash files and they even check the file to make sure it has not been renamed. Some of them are even using this now to make money, yes everythings free but if you want to enable ftp you pay. There are not many hosts like this though and I think it may only be a select few control panels which prevent uploading of these type of files. Basicaly if you have ftp access you should not have a problem.

Originally posted by influence
flash movies, animations and lots of graphics eat up lots of bandwidth so you going have to look for a host with good amount of bandwidth

I don't agree. Bad use of Flash will eat up more bandwidth than using conventional methods (html + jpg/gif/png), but if you use Flash well, it will *save* bandwidth. It's just as easy to create a big Flash animation as it is to create a big conventional page (using a large background image, wav sound file, bad gif compression etc.). It's easier however to create a small Flash file than it is to create a small conventional page (due to the vector and compression abilities of Flash).

Originally posted by cheesysticks
There should be nothing in the way if you pay for hosting, but some of the free hosts use cgi scripts that block flash files and they even check the file to make sure it has not been renamed. Some of them are even using this now to make money, yes everythings free but if you want to enable ftp you pay. There are not many hosts like this though and I think it may only be a select few control panels which prevent uploading of these type of files. Basicaly if you have ftp access you should not have a problem.

Thanks...I read something about that somewhere which is why I wanted to double check.

And about bandwidth, I'm not sure if Flash files will be that big of a problem. Once a 50k movie loads, it's done right? It's not like an animated gif in that sense, is it?

Originally posted by tekkendork

And about bandwidth, I'm not sure if Flash files will be that big of a problem. Once a 50k movie loads, it's done right? It's not like an animated gif in that sense, is it?

It's not necessarily done after 50k since a Flash movie can load external movies as well. However, for a Flash movie it loads in a stream and only requires one hit. Seperate images require many more hits, so in the end a Flash movie should not only be smaller but also result in less hits on the server (not less unique users of course!).

But a simple Flash movie should be done after 50k if it's 50k yeah.

It may not be necessary, but it sounds like the one thing you might look for is whether they have the mime types created for flash content. Although most do.

In the hands of someone who is really good with flash, the sizes can be really tiny compared to the content. I've seen 5 minute movies that that are only few 100k, but ive also seen short animations that are 3MB...

With my experience Flash can go either way, it either eats all your bandwidth, or very little.

*tosses 2 pennies in the cup*