Jeffrey Veen writes about a really good function for Flash intro pages: Skip Always. The idea is that when a site employs a Flash intro (also known as demon possession in some web development circles) that they offer a ‘skip always’ link that will set a cookie so that they get to the actual home page in subsequent visits.
A great idea. It’s taking the web one step closer to being used more like desktop applications with user preferences being properly stored etc. Perhaps a ‘my settings’ tab can be used to turn on and off things like the flash intro, what new to display and what no to, etc. slashdot is one example of a news site that has user preferences, but surely you shouldn’t need to be logged in to use it?! I recall a site where you could save and load user cookies for sharing preferences between PCs (not sure of the URL though). A great idea for usability – unless you browse with cookies disabled.