My hate of flash intro animations and useless UI widgets knows no bounds. I’ve got nothing against flash in principle, but gods do designers ever misuse it, and increasingly advertisers are using it, leading me to constantly re-jigger my adblock settings. I’ve been using flashblock to address this. Basically it intercepts any flash object and replaces it with a clickable link. If you need the flash, you can click on it and use it as the designer intended – if you don’t, you never have to see it.