How to best deal with a clients 'vision'

I’d just tell him that flash content is hidden from google. If he wants people to be able to actually find, and read his articles/content/advertisers ads, then flash is definitely a no go.

1. Show him the google webmasters page, specifically: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
Go to ’technical guidelines’ section, 1st point, with him:

• "Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site."

2. Then fire up a lynx browser, and go look at some flash sites with him watching. Nothing will show up for any flash content you look at.

3. If he’s any kind of a business person at all, that will be the end of flash forever.

Dave

(Ive been forced to do this 3-4 times before, when biz clients want non-html designs done for the web. Worked every time. )

Imagine for a moment you run a house painting business, someone approaches you and wants their house painted pink and purple. you do your "in my professional opinion that sucks and you will want it repainted again very soon as you will come to realise your house looks S**# etc etc." - but no, they want it pink and purple - OK, get out the paint brushes and the pink and purple paint, earn some money, feed family, buy expensive mountain bike or new ipad - move on to next job - life’s good.

Feed flash driven site with google friendly xml file, learn actionscript, have some design fun (flash is good for some things) - pencil in diary full site rebuild for this time next year and start thinking about mountain bike/ipad upgrade.

I do not work with Flash, so if a customer insists,
I will just go out and outsource it but I usually
try to void it... only for banners or small things.

Try doing a GOOD search in google, not just the first page.
Spend some time and also try different search terms...

Try this:
http://www.google.com.mx/search?q=jquery+page+flip&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

In this simple search and first page I found this:
http://grasshopperpebbles.com/ajax/jquery-plugin-imbookflip-page-turning-without-flash/

The StarGate demo, auto-running with sound looks excellent.
You could probably modify it to your needs...
and dont forget to send me my comission...

This is an interesting look at where this kind of feature set (without Flash) is heading...

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/01/adobe_announces_magazine_digital_publishing_platform_for_apple_ipad.html

Thanks everyone. I actually have taken an approach that has many aspects mentioned in this thread. We’ll see how it turns out. I’ve created a virtual ’book’ before in Flash with good results so it wasn’t that I thought I couldn’t do it, nor that I don’t like doing it but I firmly believe it’s not appropriate for this particular project. Some of the advice given entail approaches I’ve never thought of before.

I know actionscript and utilize external scripts for the Flash work I do but I didn’t think that a bot could read the link to an XML file. I guess if it crawls the whole site structure it’d just find it? Again thanks for everyone contributing to this thread.

When faced with silly demands or "visions" (whether pay or technique related), I’d consult this tome of truths: http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/