Crud, I just lost my whole message and have to rewrite it! Grrrr.

I have a page; top half is all image, bottom half is 1/3 navigation panel (also image) with buttons that glow when the cursor is near them and a slideout menu that happens at the same time. The other 2/3's of the bottom half of the page is text with a solid colored bitmap under it.

I am doing my layout in fireworks, and also have flash but don't know how to use it yet.

So, here's the scenario. When one of the buttons actually gets clicked on, I want a set of doors to close over the top of the bottom half of the page BEFORE THE PAGE CHANGES. My doors are in png and gif formats at the moment.

Can this be done with a gif, or in dreamweaver's timeline, or should I make an swf in flash and import it?

Initially it was suggested to me that I build this page in flash because it is so image heavy. But then it was recommended that I build it in dreamweaver because of searchability issues.

Since this page is soooo image heavy, would it be advantageous to import my images as swfs? Is it possible to actually have a swf load like an image and not be a movie? If the answer is yes, would it make my entire page download faster? Would I need a flash preloader for a site made this way?

As you may be able to see, I can sure dream these ideas up and need a dream weaver to put it all together! Any and all guidance will be greatly appreciated. All I'm really looking for at this point is something like - your doors can be done with a ____ file , when you are placing your links and effects to the button you have to do such and such as well. As for delaying the next page load this is what you do ... Or, yes, you can use swfs instead of jpegs, or no - you should just slice up your images. And finally, yes or no to a preloader.
And then, ultimately: Good luck kiddo, pretty ambitious project for a newbie, but it can be done!

Thank you all. I look forward to receving your recommendations! shelley