Could anyone a bit IT savvy give me some advice please. My mother has website for a holiday cottage (link) that was built for her using flash for the photo gallery across the middle of the pages. With so many people using ipads and Android tablets to search for holidays this would seem daft. What would be best to do the job instead (and keep the changing photos changing rather than static)?

And no I’m not one of the mountain bikers before there are any sarky comments but yes it is not a bad place to go to ride your bike 😉

HTML5?

HTML5. Flash, and Reader, are both full of security holes used for hacking exploits. Adobe are constantly having to try to fix them, with little success so far, so using something that’s a lot more secure, along with giving greater access to mobile devices makes lots of sense.

Have a ‘pictures of holiday cottage x here’ link (new page) to a flickr site? – and return the links from Flickr….

Thanks – html5 sounds like the first google I need to do. The site needs a bit of a refresh so maybe a page of photos either as a standalone thing or via flikr would be a good thing too.

If you go HTML5 then you’ll probably want a HTML5 reset stylesheet (you just need to add one in) or you’ll get some issues with certain browsers. In my experience at least.

Can’t see what it’s supposed to look like as I am viewing it on an iPad… But I should have thought that some kind of jQuery carousel would fix it for you – assuming that you want pictures to change every x seconds?

I’d doubt the type of people shopping for holiday cottages are going to be impressed by a clever rotating gallery. You just want a simple, clean, modern looking page of photos than can be easily viewed.

Why bother over complicating things?

But I should have thought that some kind of jQuery carousel would fix it for you

This.

HTML5 is still in its infancy, and as such suffers from a lack of support just like flash. But you don’t need to worry about it. Because a Javascript library like jQuery will do it for you, and it will work on most platforms. It’s pretty much the industry standard for this kinda thing at the moment. Google jQuery carousel.

It’s a little bit technical, but you’ll find loads of tutorials and the implementation is actually really simple.

I’d doubt the type of people shopping for holiday cottages are going to be impressed by a clever rotating gallery. You just want a simple, clean, modern looking page of photos than can be easily viewed.

Why bother over complicating things?

Also this.

Fancy image galleries CAN be really annoying. Try not to over-cook it.

Edit: Just looked at you link. Have a look at jQuery Cycle. http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle/

Alternative to Flash

TJ?

Plenty of good advice above. Keep it simple using just HTML or a bit of jquery if you want a moving photo gallery. The idea of linking to flickr (or maybe facebook, then you can get more links and likes) is quite good as you can easily add content if you get a nice photo one day or add seasonal stuff. A flashy or a Flash website would put me off a bit for that type of business.

Try not to over-cook it.

Good advice this. Adding fancy flippy galleries really adds nothing, and causes a lot of problems. All I want is a page of small-ish images or large thumbnails, which open up larger images when you click.

Considering holiday cottages are generally sold on the visuals then it’s the perfect site for rotating images.

Granted it can be done badly but if the views & décor sell the place then IMO it would be silly to dismiss getting a sample of this in front of the viewer as early and simply as possible.

By placing the images in a gallery only you’re forcing viewers into spending far longer on the site / more clicks and risking them never making it that far.

Remember the average site visit is measured in seconds, you need to capture people instantly to make them look further.

(+1 for jQuery)

Considering holiday cottages are generally sold on the visuals then it’s the perfect site for rotating images.

This is what is wrong with the internet. All of it. Every last bit.

Why?

EDIT: Found the answer…

I’d doubt the type of people shopping for holiday cottages are going to be impressed by a clever rotating gallery.

It’s not about impressing them with a fancy website. Its about impressing them with the location / cottage and picking the best method of communicating this.

Considering most people won’t make it past the landing page why hide this away?