i understand. the site i am working on is for the "Riverside Artist Lofts" and i am doing both an HTML and a flash site. yes there is going to be content, a lot of artwork, and music. it is probably going to be more for me than anyone else, considering only about 10% of the online population has broadband. there are ways to optimize it for dial-up, its just that noone does it, they are lazy. even if they do, it still is a pain in the ass for dial-up. when the first page loads, there will be a choice between loading the flash or html only site. flash will not be forced. i do wish that macromedia would release their secret behind "action scripting", and that more companies could develop their own software for it, but that doesn't seem likely.
thanks for the response, it will influence my future web projects. I have gotten used to DSL and start to think that everyone has it