>>Also flash is not universally supported.<<
Nothing is universally supported by the way, but flash is installed on more systems than any other third party technology. The last numbers I saw say it has a 97% penetration.
>>You can get near as good effects with javascript and css<<
While you can do a lot of very cool stuff using AJAX and SVG technology (just look at the Apple site), it isn’t really as flexible as Flash technology is. Also considering that Flash has a non-programming based design environment makes it far more accessible for more users to create content in.
>>Also I would then be tied to editing a preexisting work and changing a theme is limited to free templates.<<
The solution to that is to of course learn Flash and design your own sites instead of relying on templates.
